As a narrowly focused debate continues over the Republic's broadband capabilities the telecommunications network's ability to handle the growing range of bandwidth-demanding data applications over the Internet the relevant issues, vital to a healthy, competitive business climate, still have not been addressed.

The debate began with media speculation centred on claims that Telecom Eireann could not provide adequate connections for a Microsoft "mirror" Website, a low-technology project requiring a large amount of bandwidth, with few long-term jobs attached to it. The experts said this was nonsense everyone from telecommunications industry analysts with Ovum and Data Monitor in Britain, to global technology consultants, PA Consulting, as well as telecoms industry insiders in Ireland.

Whether Telecom could offer the desired network with an architecture and price, and within a timeframe which satisfies a given client, is the essential issue. Certainly, some Irish companies have voiced the suspicion that Telecom sits on infrastructure it already has, rather than putting it to work. An equally important issue is whether a state the size of the Republic which, like most of Europe, is just beginning to develop a broadband infrastructure, should reserve large portions of it for a single company.

In the case of the much-ballyhooed mirror site, it appears that Microsoft didn't like the package offered. The project went to London a decision certainly influenced by the fact that London also lies directly on the international Internet backbone.

In any case, Microsoft signalled its own satisfaction with other Telecom large-bandwidth tenders by signing two contracts last week, for a network with the capacity to handle 622 megabits per second, and for a 34Mbps link to Britain. Those projects surpass what Microsoft reportedly wanted for its mirror site: a 34Mbps connection with a promise to add in additional lines in the future. But all of these projects need to be considered in the light of one stark fact: within Europe, only Scandinavia and Britain have particularly well-developed broadband networks.

"The problems Telecom Eireann are facing are common all across Europe," says Ovum's telecommunications analyst in London, Mr Barry Flanigan, who recently completed a comprehensive report on broadband communications within Europe.

All analysts will explain that open competition spawns new investment in broadband infrastructure, but the Republic, with a population not even a third of London's, will always have a hard time competing against Britain, one of the most liberalised telecoms markets in Europe. Telecom Eireann will spend £350 million this year on broadband infrastructure. British Telecom will plough £1 billion half its overall budget into broadband this year. (And before critics complain that the Republic has moved unusually slowly in this area, a BT spokesman says BT only put about 5 to 10 per cent of its budget into broadband as recently as two years ago.)

Britain has also more than 10 competitors adding to its broadband infrastructure or re-selling what's already there in price-competitive ways. In the Republic, new competitors like Esat and WorldCom, with investments in moderate double-digit figures, have made only tiny add-ons to overall infrastructure development. No one is yet flashing any major cash.

Which brings us to the main culprit in this over-played drama not Telecom Eireann or its competitors, but the Government.

While the Government offered its belated rollback of Telecom's derogation as if it were a triumphal act on behalf of "The People", the truth is that every Government of the past decade has failed to offer a plan on how it intends to deal with much less capitalise upon the digital world now upon us.

The neglect starts at the most basic, practical levels, like computer support for children. The Republic boasts of its technical know-how how many times have you read that it's the second largest exporter of software in the world? yet little software of any sort ends up in the nation's schools, or the computers that run it.

Shamefully, the Republic also comes in at the bottom end of survey after survey on European and international computer capability.

Again and again, the Government has failed to move proactively. It could and should have lifted the derogation well before now. Many Government ministers still seem blissfully unaware of the nuts-and-bolts facts about the technology industries which have become a mainstay of the State's current economic prosperity.

Many don't understand the Internet at all. Yet, these people will decide the Republic's future in a technology-based world which changes at blistering speed. All governments have done, at the most alarmingly leisurely pace, is set up committees to think about issues that should have been thought about five years ago, and issue vague reports on the information age.

Six months drift by a lifetime of change in terms of any tech-driven industry and a new report appears. Little is actually done.

The free market can stimulate massive broadband investment in a very large country like the US, and to a lesser extent in Britain the market will snap up bandwidth if it's offered. The tiny Republic, if it remains reliant on the same laissez-faire approach, cannot hope to compete against such giants in any significant way.

The Government cannot continue to let the IDA and Forfas "deal with that sort of complicated thing" and hope someone else will figure out what needs doing to keep the State attractive to inward investment.

So, let's get Telecom and Microsoft off the stage. The spotlight should be on the Government, which must deliver an vision of what the State is trying to achieve for its digital future and specifically, how it intends to achieve it. It's time for some real support for an information-age Republic, not another set of grand but empty verbal gestures.

Karlin Lillington is at klillington@irish-times.ie