EARLIER this month Telecom Eireann launched its competition to find Ireland's "information age town". When the winning town in the multi million pound project is announced next June, it will be saturated with modern communications tools. The aim, as Telecom's chief executive, Alfie Kane, put it, is "to see what happens when an entire community becomes wired".
But last weekend Westport jumped ahead of the posse with its own, more modest experiment. With a population of 4,250, the Co Mayo town is ineligible for the "Information age town" project - Telecom has decided towns entering the competition must have 5,000 to 30,000 people. Undeterred, though, it has just launched its own "Westport Wired to the World" initiative.
The project was first sketched out on the back of a beer mat by Stephan Wik of local Internet service providers Clew Bay Networks and John Mallon of Apple Ireland. Last Saturday the plan became reality in the Westport Woods Hotel before a large local audience. It involves too Apple Mac computers, an "Internet club" and the town's new Web site, which lists tourist accommodation, restaurants and local events.
At the launch, mayor and local councillor Dermott Langan described the town, situated at the foot of Croagh Patrick and on the edge of Clew Bay, as "a remote and rugged place on the Western periphery, making full use of the latest technology available in the Western World".
Perhaps predictably, a display at the launch juxtaposed the old and the new, with ancient forms of writing of the Bohan Stone, copperplate writing on local ledgers from the 1900s, and a reliable old Smith and Coruna typewriter all from the Westport Historical Society - alongside some of the project's Apple Performas.
In the sponsorship deal, 89 local businesses and households can purchase the Macs at reduced rates, another 10 machines have been donated to the nine primary schools nearest to the town and to the library, and one machine is earmarked for a limited draw over the next week.
The schools will have free internet connections via two local internet service providers (ISPs), Clew Bay Networks and Jazzy Bee internet services. Jazzy Bee will also provide training, and is opening a cybercafe in the town next Friday.
Most of Ireland's largest ISPs - have provided free internet access to schools for some time now. but a persistent problem has been the high running cost of daytime phone bills to access the Internet. The schools in Westport are no exception, and business and home users are obviously affected too.
Maria Hughes, who bought one of the Performas after seeing the advertisement in the local newspaper, explained that in a household with two teenagers she had to restrict internet use to weekends, "to keep an eye on the telephone costs" - and "not to have them staring at the screen all the time". She also talked enthusiastically about her six year old son's facility with the commands. "Children have no fear of failure so they have only the sense of possibility," she said,
Speaking at the launch, Apple's marketing manager Robbie Hanlon remarked on the Government's recent announcement that it would be putting more PCs into schools. The student machine ratio in Ireland is 100:1 while in the US the ratio is 3:1. With that kind of access, a project such as Westport Wired to the Web seems only the start.
The participants range from Stephan Wik's son Christopher (12), who has designed his own Web site, to Rosemary Garvey, who is in her seventies and has written several books on local history. She lives 28 miles outside the town at Killadoon, near Louisburgh.
Stephan Wik, originally from Sweden and who came to Westport by way of Scotland and Denmark, sees the project as potentially allowing young people to stay where they grew up - and enabling the possible return or arrival of others. As the mayor, Dermott Lagan, put it: "This widespread connection to the Internet has opened up a huge new range of possibilities for our town in terms of the advantages of electronic commerce, information availability, entertainment and personal communication."
For three local schoolgirls, the Wired Westport project offers other pleasures too. Grace O'Malley, Clare O'Grady and Erin Moroney thought it was "a great thing". Erin referred to the current television deflector controversy which had left her favourite programme, Friends, off air. The first thing she intends to do is to visit the Friends Web site to stay in touch with the series.