Wired? They almost blew a fuse as Ennis woke up to a new dawn as Ireland's Information Age Town. Amid a sea of silver balloons, Mr T.J. Waters, president of the Ennis Chamber of Commerce, yelled "Up the Banner" as he was surrounded by the jubilant citizens of the Clare capital.
The crowd sang The Lovely Rose of Clare, relishing a memorable month for the town. They had taken the minor and senior hurling titles but this topped them all.
"All good things come in threes," said the vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce, Mr Paul Flynn. "This is better than three All-Irelands. There'll be some celebration in the town tonight."
Minister for the Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands and local TD, Ms Sile de Valera, had come to the Point Theatre to support her home county.
She said she was stunned. "I think I was more excited than anyone else at the table," she said. "They have worked so hard for this and it will really take Ennis into the information age."
The intrepid gang of Ennis technophiles had been "cautiously optimistic" before the results were called out. "On the day of the proposal we went in front of a live audience of 200 and live on the Internet and Clare FM Radio," said a delighted Mr Waters.
Pat Kenny popped champagne and the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, smiled as they hailed an information town called Ennis.
Mr Alfie Kane, chief executive of Telecom Eireann, said the showcase the team had organised as well as the massive community support had clinched it.
But it was a close contest and the other shortlisted towns - Killarney, Castlebar and Kilkenny - were not too downhearted.
Telecom Eireann will invest £1 million worth of information technology into them. It will also provide free voicemail facilities to everyone in the town.
"We are absolutely delighted to be part of this project", said Mr Waters. "We received such a broad base of support and took a totally holistic approach. It helped that people really wanted to be part of the information age."
Ms O'Rourke said the challenge would be to ensure that the technological revolution reached everywhere.
In a week when Ireland was portrayed as the most backward of nations by a British soap opera, Ennis showed last night that it had more in common with modem microchips and megabytes than with pigs in the parlour.