Few Irish companies are likely to apply for the new generic top-level domain (TLD) address dedicated to the business community, .biz, according to industry sources.

The TLD is among the first of seven new generic TLDs to be introduced as part of efforts to relieve pressure on the oversubscribed .com, .net and .org domain names. The others are .info, .pro, .aero, .coop, .museum and .name.

"I think as far as the average person is concerned, if they find one or two names that they like, they'll just stick with them," said Mr Michael Fagan, chief executive of IEDR, the Irish domain name registry.

Mr Fagan said that companies who were serious about export business would already have a .com address, while those whose business is mainly in the State would have a .ie address. He added that if the proposed .eu domain registry was set up, it would provide serious competition to the oversubscribed .com name for companies operating within the EU.

Mr Fagan is part of an Irish consortium campaigning to have the proposed .eu registry based in the Republic. The EU parliament recently voted to set the process of establishing the .eu TLD in motion, and tenders are being invited to gauge the level of interest in running the registry.

It is proposed that .eu will be presented as a more upmarket domain than .com, which will mean greater rules and restrictions over the granting of domain names. However, it will not be quite as restrictive as those operated by some national registries.

Another member of the .eu Irish consortium, Mr Cormac Callanan of the Internet Service Providers' Association of Ireland, also expressed some scepticism over the usefulness of the new TLD domains.

NeuLevel, operator of the .biz TLD, has already been attracting some criticism over its management of the domain. The registration process has been criticised by one Gartner analyst for not providing enough protection for the trademarks held by applicants for the new domain.

The company, which aims for the .biz name to become fully operational by October, will also employ its own disputes resolution process to resolve challenges related to the business only nature of the registry.

However, the criticism will come as no surprise to keen observers of the Internet domain name business, which has been the subject of much political and legal debate.