4. Internet Usage

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Hours on internet per user per month. Source: comScore World Metrix, June 2008 vs. June 2007

Ireland has one of the fastest growing online audiences in Europe, but it has some distance to go before typical usage patterns here mirror those of our European neighbours.

Year-to-year audience figures from comScore show Ireland’s internet audience in June 2008 was 1.6 million, an increase of 15% on the previous year.

In terms of fastest growing audiences, this puts Ireland in joint third position with Spain and behind the Russian Federation (27%) and France (21%). The size of the overall European Internet audience is put at 241 million, up 8% on a year ago.

As the graph shows, our nearest neighbour holds the record for the greatest amount of time spent online. A typical UK user spends 28.5 hours a month online, twice the Irish level and just over five hours more than the average time across all European countries.

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