People wanting to rent an apartment or a house in Ireland can search for their ideal home courtesy of a new Internet service introduced by Dublin estate agents Hooke & MacDonald.

The agency's service details all kinds of apartments and houses available in Dublin and adjoining counties in all sorts of categories. It is planned to include Belfast lettings in the coming weeks and eventually the entire country. "We expect a huge response to the service because of the growing importance of the letting market," says Ken MacDonald, managing director of Hooke & MacDonald. He estimates the volume of lettings in Dublin alone has more than doubled in the past four years because of the sharp increase in the workforce and the number of people returning to Dublin to take up employment. People looking to rent a home using the "Virtual Letting Agency" should be able to find suitable accommodation once they fill in a database indicating the type of apartment or home required, rent level, area and whether it should be furnished or unfurnished and have a car space.

However, people looking for an apartment in one part of Dublin may be offered a house in another area of the city simply because it is in the same price range. Hooke & MacDonald expects that the new "Let on the Net" service will be particularly useful to companies relocating workers to Ireland. Andersen Consulting was the first corporate client to use the new service to find accommodation for some of the 350 staff it will be employing in Dublin.

The new service is available at www.hookemacdonald.ie