Ireland- Weak consumer infrastructure weighs down performance

Ireland’s position remains unchanged in its group of innovation-driven economies on the Connectivity Scorecard 2010. The country posts a respectable performance but is limited somewhat by average scores in consumer infrastructure.

Ireland performs very well on business measures. The business infrastructure is robust, with high penetration of secure internet servers and good broadband and telephony services adoption by the enterprise sector. It also reports moderate PC penetration and business investments in ICT. Irish businesses also do well on business usage and skills metrics such as the proportion of electronic transactions in overall business turnover, the internet presence of businesses and the proportion of skilled workforce. The country also performs quite well on government-related metrics.

However, the country’s consumer infrastructure is marked by surprisingly low broadband penetration and decent broadband speeds. Ireland, therefore, needs to invest more in this area for a more balanced ICT landscape. In addition, it is worth finding out how much the country owes ICT growth in the business sector to multinationals and how Irish businesses, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), fare in terms of ICT usage.

Ireland Connectivity Performance by Scorecard Component