When IDA Ireland targeted the electronics firms in the 1980s, it was pulling, for the first time, what one executive this week called "the usual Irish trick". In jargon, this is known as "first mover advantage"; - getting in before anyone else.
After electronics, in the 1990s the agency pursued the software firms, then the personal computer manufacturers, then the call centres around 1995, then the shared-services operations. It captured far more than its fair share of these investments, and continues to do so.
Now the agency, with the full backing of the Government, is trying for the same thing with e-commerce. Even the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, was fairly blunt about it.
"We decided in the autumn to move swiftly, because to do anything else would be a mistake," Mr Ahern said. "We've tried to steal a march on some of our competitors."
According to IDA chief executive, Mr Sean Dorgan, the 25 gigabit-per-second pipeline now being built by Global Crossing and underwritten by the Government, has not come a moment too soon.
"For one or two years now, US companies have been telling us this is what we need," he said. "The three big issues for these firms are cost, capacity and competition."
The new £60 million (€76.18m) pipe will increase capacity to and from the Republic by 15 times, and should drive down the cost of using it to just 10 per cent of current prices. On the question of competition among telecommunications firms, Mr Dorgan said that the State would hold onto 30 per cent of the pipe's capacity.
Just now, banking your industrial strategy on e-commerce looks as close as it can get to a sure bet. Worldwide, an estimated €830 billion (£654 billion) will be changing hands online annually by 2002. Forfas, the umbrella agency charged with developing industrial policy reckons there will be at least 35,000 new jobs in e-commerce in the next decade.
It dovetails nicely with the two central goals the State set recently for the IDA: to spread the development to regions relatively untouched by growth, and to move Irish industry "up the value chain", creating more high-skill, high-earning jobs.
Industrial development in the EU's Objective One area - in broad terms the west and the Border counties - should get a boost from this week's news. As Global Crossing strives to complete the link between its world network and Dublin, a number of other telecommunications companies will build broadband fibre-optic links leading from the digital park to Athlone, Claremorris, Ballina, Sligo, Clonmel, Kilkenny, Tallaght, Castlebar, Donegal and 75 other locations. In theory, this should make somewhere considered to be remote until now as attractive for e-commerce investment as Dublin.
The Government also believes that the development of e-commerce will help shift Irish jobs up the value chain. The theory here is twofold: first, that many of the companies running call-centres and shared-services operations throughout the State will evolve into e-commerce companies, retraining most of their current payroll of 10,000.
This is not at all far-fetched. As the customers of travel companies based here - such as Hertz, Best Western or American Airlines - make more and more of their reservations on the Internet, so the websites of the firms will have to be ready.
Someone previously occupied answering the phone and typing in bookings might be involved in developing the website, updating the information, managing the global database of millions of customers, online advertising or promotion.
Second, the IDA believes there will be a boom in new e-commerce business, from existing and new companies. An increasing number of multinationals now have a policy of only purchasing on the Internet. This allows for global, open tendering; it means restrictions on buyers are imposed uniformly, effectively bars other companies' reps from premises, and cuts down enormously on paper transactions and the related administration work.
The best existing example of this new business model is Viking, in Ballymount, Dublin. A subsidiary of one of the largest office supplies firms in the world, Office Depot, Viking's operation for Germany and Britain is moving online - and being run from here.
It means jobs for those involved in setting up the site, developing and updating it, providing technical support to customers, managing the database and other information, designing marketing programs, running customer analysis, and administration.
"We have the people for this," Mr Dorgan said. "People with the right IT backgrounds, the software skills. We have a pro-business environment, a favourable tax regime, and we speak English. Now, we have the physical, telecommunications capacity."
A third element in the future e-commerce sector is a potential joker in the pack for the Republic: creative content provision. As users everywhere become accustomed to bandwidth, they will expect their online content to put this to good use. The process of buying a book, for example, could include downloading a video clip of the author being interviewed; booking a holiday might entail checking out a quick multimedia guide to the location. Who better than the Irish, the argument goes, to tell such stories online?
IDA sources say the agency long ago drew up its target list of the world's top 100 e-commerce companies and its executives have already made initial contact with them all.
"Our people are out there, knocking on doors. We are already in negotiations with seven companies," one source said this week.
"And our hand has really been strengthened by the new pipe - it means we're serious."
