It gives me great pleasure to be here in the Shannon Oaks this evening, to officially launch this impressive conference centre. This Hotel and Country Club now links comfort with state of the art technology and delegates can speak to people anywhere in the world on the ISDN link, which we shall be seeing shortly.

Certainly, advances in technology are taking us into a new era. The global communications revolution is changing the shape of the world economy. Dramatic advances in technology and the development of the Internet as a platform for electronic commerce are at the heart of this revolution. Within 2/3 years the Internet will have created a single market of over 300 million computer-based consumers world-wide. The scale of growth forecast for electronic commerce is phenomenal. Today, such transactions are worth $22bn per annum. But by 2002, the value of these transactions is expected to have risen to $350bn per annum.

Irish business, whether indigenous or foreign owned, must be at the heart of this revolution and access to competitively priced broadband telecommunications infrastructure, not only within Ireland; but also connected to the global broadband telecommunications networks, is a prerequisite for Ireland's future economic well-being.

In this regard, our Government decided last year to accelerate liberalisation and competition in the telecommunications sector. This Government also decided to establish a public-private consortium to negotiate with submarine cable providers to extend to Ireland significant additional bandwidth capacity which would be connected to the global telecommunications infrastructure.

The magnitude of the economic opportunities afforded by the advances in telecommunications technologies, including broadband, has pushed Information Society and electronic commerce issues to the forefront of the Government's agenda and I am determined that Irish business will be well positioned to reap the rewards from these developments. Electronic commerce businesses will tend to be attracted to those countries with low cost, high quality telecommunications and Internet services, good business and legal environments for electronic commerce and highly skilled workforces.

Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have given us the potential to break the traditional barriers to employment and other opportunities experienced for example by, the disabled, people living in rural areas and women in the home.

Teleworking has emerged as part of this international evolution and has opened up the possibility of separating out the action of work from its usual location where such work is knowledge based. I set up the National Advisory Council on Teleworking in April of last year. I had the pleasure of meeting many of the Council Members here in the Shannon Oaks in November last year when they attended the Telework Ireland Conference which I was privileged to address.

The Council's task is to report back to me on the development of teleworking employment opportunities here in Ireland and to recommend attainable actions to promote these opportunities. I am looking forward to their report which I expect to receive soon.

There are many good reasons for introducing teleworking including the creation of jobs in remote rural areas, making services available to customers outside normal office hours, taking advantage of a ready supply of labour in a different locality and attracting or retaining people with scarce skills.

There is no doubt that Teleworking can present major opportunities, to address skills shortages, to improve life styles, to enhance rural development, to integrate people with disabilities, to create employment and to reduce the traffic congestion, in our major cities and large towns.

In essence, Teleworking brings work to the people, a reverse of what seemed for so long, an unstoppable trend - of bringing people to where the work is.

Teleworking, offers the potential of a person working in any part of Ireland, be it in an urban or rural location, to supply services to anywhere in the world using a modern telecommunications infrastructure.

Ireland's countryside, particularly in the West and North - West, suffers from population depletion, while our cities and large towns, continue to grow at an unsustainable rate. The arrival of telecommunications offers the first significant opportunity to redress this imbalance and to repopulate Rural Ireland. It has the potential to create many new and varied opportunities for many people across Ireland, in small rural hamlets and towns, in addition to the traditional centres of employment in larger cities and towns.

The services sector in particular has the potential to use new technologies to increase the regionalisation of its industries throughout Ireland. In fact, a major review of services strategy has recently begun with the award of a contract, under tender to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, to carry out a study of the services sector to determine ways and means of stimulating greater activity throughout Ireland in all services, with particular reference to regional development and employment growth. Work on this review, which is co-funded with the European Commission from Measure 3 of the Small Business Operational Programme, is already underway and should be completed within a six months time-frame.

We should not just think of the Information Society in terms its business and employment capabilities. The Information Society is also about people and should be used by people to improve their quality of life. This could be by buying goods and services on the internet, using electronic mail to speak to friends worldwide or downloading information on any topic imaginable.

It is important that this message reaches everyone and the Shannon Oaks Hotel and Country Club is a great example to us all of how technology can be used to offer a high class conferencing service that brings the world to Portumna and Portumna to the world.

I also wish to talk to you all about the beautiful environs in which this excellent hotel is situated. You all the know the popular saying "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." I can assure you all that when your work is finished here in the hotel, there are plenty of opportunities for leisure in the locality. I recommend that your first port of call should be Portumna Castle and Forest Park. The beautiful Park is inhabited by deer and other wildlife. You could take a walk through the forest or on the nature trails. Climb the observation tower and enjoy the spectacular views of Lough Derg. If you would prefer something more energetic, Emerald Star Line's marina and the Yacht Club are nearby. There are numerous other attractions in the vicinity of the town. These include the two Golf Courses, Pallas Castle, and Pallas Go-Kart Racing circuit to name but a few.

For those of you interested in architecture and history, you will find Portumna Castle fascinating. The Castle itself dates back to 1518 and was accidentally destroyed by fire in 1826. It came into State ownership in the mid-20th Century and thankfully is now in the process of being restored. My Government colleague, Mr Eamon O'Cúiv T.D., Minister of State at the Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, launched the Portumna Estate Draft Management plan on 16th April 1998. This plan, not only has as its objective the protection of the castle, priory, courtyards, gardens and waterways within the estate, but also the conservation of their unique landscape context. This is indeed a very bold and ambitious challenge but one which, bearing in mind the uniqueness of the estate, is without question worthy of being met.

For those of you who want more exciting activity, you can always go horse riding or pony tracking and for the fisherman there are oceans of fish in Lough Derg and in many local rivers, especially the Shannon.

There will be very few nowadays who are unaware of the fact that our tourism industry has been breaking its own records annually for the last twelve years, and is set to continue to do so well into the new millennium. In the same period, the national tourism infrastructure - quality accommodation, sporting, leisure and cultural facilities - have been totally transformed, and both private and EU investments in that development has been taking place at an unprecedented level in our past history.

The growth in accommodation in the Ireland-West region has been remarkable in recent years. In the four-year period 1994 to 1998, the number of hotel rooms has increased by 25 per cent, guest house rooms by 48 per cent, approved B&B rooms by 11 per cent, holiday hostels by 36 per cent and self-catering by 37 per cent. Fortunately, the number of overseas visitors to the Region has been growing too, at an annual average rate of 8 per cent in the same period.

With accommodation growth of this level, and we see it here in Portumna with the opening in 1997 of this magnificent Hotel and in 1998 of Shannonside School House, there is a need to aggressively market the many tourist attractions and facilities of Ireland West, especially South-East Galway. I am pleased to say that as a result of a special regionality fund provided to Ireland West Tourism by my Government colleague Dr. James McDaid, T.D., Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, in 1998, Ireland West has been in a position to undertake a series of overseas marketing initiatives for this beautiful region. Minister McDaid has provided further monies this year for a similar marketing programme.

I would like to conclude by thanking you for taking time out of your busy schedules to come to Portumna. I am sure that you will find the trip worthwhile and I look forward to meeting you again at the conferences which you will ask Mr. John Pardy, Mr. Denis Deary, Mr. Adrian Cummins and their efficient team to organise for you in the future.