The Government is to unveil on Monday a major initiative designed to lay the foundation for information age business, announcing that it has chosen the telecommunications giant Global Crossing to provide a £70 million (€89 million) high-speed cable connecting the Republic to a network spanning the world. The fibre-optic pipe will arrive in Ireland at Dublin's CityWest business park, where spurs will be built to many parts of the State.
The project has been driven forward mainly by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke - with the full support of the Taoiseach - and is designed to propel the Republic to the fore of the "information age". The size and capacity of the pipeline should ensure that the Republic's burgeoning telecommunications needs are met for at least a decade.
Under the deal - to be announced by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, the Tanaiste, Ms Harney and Ms O'Rourke - the Government will allocate £12 million to "broadband" projects in 1999, a sum that could rise to £60 million over three years. The State will underwrite the cost of building the new cable. It is likely, however that the cost will eventually be borne by other telecommunications companies. Esat, for example, is expected to pay up to £15 million to guarantee capacity.
The pipe will connect Ireland with the US and Europe through the Global Crossing international network. It will be laid to the CityWest business park on the Naas Road, west of Dublin, which is run by IDA Ireland and is to be designated as the national digital park. From there, the State will contract a number of telecommunications firms to construct broadband cable links to other cities and towns.
For example, although the company would not comment last night, the ESB-British Telecom joint venture Ocean is expected to build the Dublin to Galway pipe. Another spur is being planned to a business park in Belfast, allowing Northern Ireland share in the benefits of the project.
The decision to build the cable forms an integral part of the Government's long-term industrial development strategy. While the Republic is already connected to the rest of Europe and the world through several existing cables, analysts say the capacity of the pipe to be announced on Monday is far greater than these.
It should mean that the Republic can attract overseas companies that need absolute assurances that their high-capacity requirement will always be met. It should also ensure that many parts of the State currently bereft of technology investment will in future be able to share in the anticipated growth in the area.
Because of this, some of the projects will be eligible for subsidies under European Union structural fund programmes.
The cable will increase capacity to such an extent that it significantly reduces the cost of broadband access to the United States for the foreseeable future.
Global Crossing, based in Bermuda, says it is currently creating "the world's first independent global fibre optic network, designed to offer the highest quality city-to-city communications connectivity among the largest cities worldwide".
The company is expected to lay the submarine cable from a point along the east coast to Land's End in Cornwall, where it will connect directly to Global Crossing's network, the AC1 and AC2 pipes, to the US and Europe.