Net Results: You may not realise this but the Republic is a world leader in the provision of digital TV services.

There are 389,000 households in the State subscribing to a digital television service, representing 28 per cent of the market. This ranks us behind Britain, where one-third of all homes have "gone digital", but well ahead of France and Spain, the third- and fourth-ranked EU states.

Clearly, we are a nation of telly addicts that loves tuning into such novelties as the Reality TV channel or Men and Motors, but is our love affair with digital any use?

Digital TV offers consumers better picture and sound quality than the existing analogue broadcasts from RTÉ. It also enables pay-TV firms such as NTL and BSkyB to push hundreds of extra TV channels into the home.

Meanwhile, the promise of suites of new interactive services that would radically transform the way we use TV sets has failed to deliver.

NTL and Chorus couldn't afford to upgrade their cable to offer customers access to video on demand without picking up the phone. And while BSkyB's satellite service allows users to lay bets and watch sports from different angles, it hardly adds up to a revolution.

Yet, despite the lack of "killer applications" for digital TV, Irish subscriber numbers keep rising. Its popularity is probably fuelled by Irish people's widespread acceptance of paying for television services.

Six out of 10 households in the Republic have signed up to a pay-TV operator, a statistic that dwarfs take-up in almost every other European state.

Because we are used to paying for TV services, we don't object to upgrading our service to digital. This is good news for the mandarins at the European Commission, who are keen to push the roll out of digital TV in Europe.

It has highlighted digital TV as a technology that holds a lot of potential for delivering information society projects such as e-government and broadband.

As broadband networks and computers begin to converge with TV, it is realistic to predict that real interactive services will begin to emerge on Irish screens.

But there is another potential benefit of "going digital" that the Commission's eEurope 2005 Action plan has highlighted. By switching to digital broadcasting completely, governments would free up huge amounts of broadcasting spectrum that could be redirected for use in other technology projects.

Mobile phone firms and wireless broadband providers could potentially use this extra spectrum to provide a range of new, innovative services.

As Forfás noted in a recent report, additional spectrum could be used to market Ireland as a viable hub for developing mobile technologies.

The eEurope Action Plan wants EU states to set specific dates for the switch-off of the existing analogue broadcasts, which enable households to tune into channels using a TV aerial.

Bearing in mind the Republic's ranking as a world leader in digital TV, we should be among the first European states to consider such actions, shouldn't we? Unfortunately, it is not quite so simple - especially with local elections around the corner and 38 per cent of households still relying on their analogue aerials.

Switching off RTÉ's analogue signal would provoke howls of protest from people unwilling to subscribe to pay TV, which is understandable given that households already stump up €150 for the licence fee payment to RTÉ.

There is also no "freeview" digital terrestrial TV service available in the Republic as there is in Britain, where consumers have the opportunity to "go digital" for the cost of a set-top box.

A Government plan to award a digital terrestrial TV licence failed miserably in 2002 after years of digital dithering by the former minister for arts, Ms Síle de Valera. The current Minister for Communications, Mr Ahern, has been slow to take up the issue of digital broadcasting, probably due to other problems surrounding RTÉ's performance.

But the issue will not go away and, despite the State's poor track record, could offer long-term rewards.

The Government can no longer rely on a private operator to provide a viable digital terrestrial television service. Delays to the Broadcasting Act 2001 and RTÉ's kamikaze-style decision to go on the Sky platform, have undermined the commercial base for any private digital operator.

The Republic should grab this opportunity and aim to be the first state in Europe to achieve switch off of its analogue service.To do this, the State will need to spend money upgrading RTÉ's network to broadcast digital rather than analogue signals. This service could be done relatively cheaply and swiftly if it offered just the four main Irish channels - other channels may become available in time. Tax breaks or other allowances could be offered to encourage people to buy new digital equipment.

This could cost the State up to €50 million but RTÉ and the State have already spent €10 million on consultants and the previous failed competition with nothing to show for it.

So let's stop the dithering and go digital.