The Web Ireland Irish Business Internet Awards ceremony took place in the Burlington Hotel, Dublin tonight. HackWatch had an interest in the proceedings since this site was nominated as one of the Web Ireland Readers' Choice sites. That category was won by yahoo.co.uk.

 The event was webcast so that people could watch it live. The acceptance speeches were largely eliminated. The Minister for Public Enterprise, Mary O'Rourke gave a warning to the Irish banks about their sloth in adopting e-commerce.

The event was hosted by Barry Murphy who opened with a few jokes about computer people. The even was being broadcast on the web and was limited to a forty five minute broadcast. Murphy made a joke about the internet broadcast actually reaching fifteen hits at about four fifths of the way through.

The most deserved award went to Barry Flannagan and Colm Grealy of online.ie. They were joint winners of the AIB Irish Internet Industry person of the year.

The most interesting part of the broadcast was the Minister's chiding of the Irish banks in being slow in adopting e-commerce. However she also mentioned that the Irish government will be bringing forward legislation on digital signatures in an effort to provide a firm footing for Irish e-commerce activities.

The Irish banks have been laughably slow in implementing such things as internet credit card payment facilities. Strangely the Bank Of Ireland's Clikpay system was given an award at the rival Golden Spider awards. This was an extraordinarily strange event considering that the Clikpay system was not even live to Irish businesses. The Web Ireland awards did not display such crass stupidity and perhaps earned itself a reputation for a reliable, if somewhat eerie, evenhandedness. The Minister rightly congratulated the publisher of Web Ireland, Mr Stephen Finnegan, for having put together such an excellent event.

The Results

AIB Industry Person Of The Year: Barry Flanagan/Colm Grealy, online.ie

Eircom.net Irish E-Commerce Award: store.eircell.ie

BOI Business Person Of The Year: Mr Fran Rooney, Baltimore Technologies.

Oceanfree Webdesigner Of The Year: Labyrinth

Indigo Best SME: Esearch.ie

DMR Financial Website: bankofireland.ie

IEDR Best Media Site: ireland.com

Trinity Technology Best Govt Site: askireland.com

WI/thecia.ie Readers Choice: yahoo.co.uk

Esat Best E-Business: goldenpages.ie

Ericsson Best Intranet: Nestle

Conduit Best Advert Campaign: Eircell By Webfactory

IEDR ISP Of The Year: Indigo