Irish hackers meet regularly to swap notes on their illicit activities.

Mr Sean Reynolds, managing director of RITS, says that 2600 magazine, otherwise known as the hackers quarterly, publishes lists of locations and times for hackers in various countries to meet up.

Until recently he said the phone boxes on St Stephen's Green were listed as a meeting place for hackers and virus creators.

The Garda says it is aware of the magazine listings and that groups of Irish hackers have been meeting.

The meetings took place on the first Friday of the month from around 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. but the listing for the meeting in Ireland has disappeared in the last issue.

Mr Reynolds says this is probably due to action by Garda.

The 2600 list contains details of locations and meeting times for hackers from everywhere from Brazil and Australia to India and Japan.

Mr Reynolds says most Irish hackers were recent graduates or people who had spent a couple of years in college.

He says there are around six or seven hackers active here at the moment, most of them not that highly skilled.

There are probably another 20 to 30 who dabble occasionally but, on the whole, hackers here have not inflicted serious damage on the Internet.

The rationale for meeting in a public place at the same time each month is according to the magazine to cause "hell for federal agencies who want to monitor everything we do".

The meeting guidelines advise hackers meeting to act in a responsible way and not to engage in illegal acts but threaten that if "law enforcement [agencies] harass us, it will backfire".

The hacking community in Ireland may be small but hackers have defaced the website of one IT college in the south, as well as breaking into a large Irish telecommunications company and a Dublin-based radio station according to Priority Data Systems.

In a more disturbing development, in the last week, an Irish company realised its e-mail server had been hacked into and used by white supremacists, according to Mr Kevin Hanley, business development director at Priority Data Systems.

Irish mail servers are thought to be frequently used in this way.

Hackers active in the Republic can be prosecuted under the Criminal Damage Act.