The chief executive officer of IE Domain Registry, the entity that controls the administration of .ie domain names, has defended the price charged to its 30,000 users.

According to Mr Mike Fagan, the vast majority of Irish businesses that have .ie domain names are happy with the price charged.

Mr Fagan was responding to comments by a group, IE Watch, which said the price charged to .ie domain name users was 600 per cent more than the equivalent charged by the registries overseeing domains in Britain, Denmark and Holland.

The group issued a statement yesterday saying the Republic had the highest wholesale price for domain names in Europe.

It called on the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Mr Dermot Ahern, to "take positive and immediate action regarding the pricing and administration of .ie domain names".

There was no comment from the Minister's Department yesterday.

The €50 per annum wholesale price here compared unfavourably with the €7 to €8 price charged annually in Europe's cheapest domains, according to the group.

However, Mr Fagan said the price here was higher because his organisation conducted "front-end audits" before granting a domain name to an applicant.

This meant an applicant had to have a right or entitlement to a name. In other jurisdictions, a name was simply granted to an applicant if it had not already been issued.

Mr Fagan said this meant the .ie domain names were a better quality product that those in jurisdictions where no front-end audit was conducted. Business favoured this, he said.

IE Domain Registry is a not-for-profit private company limited by guarantee. It is owned by its directors, who receive no remuneration for sitting on its board.

Last year, IE Domain Registry had an income of approximately €1.5 million and an accumulated surplus of approximately €500,000.

The company was originally part of UCD but is no longer linked to the university. It is not licensed by any Government Department to operate the domain service and is unusual in that it is a private company offering a public service.