When the architect behind two of the Republic's most user-friendly websites tells you the Internet industry is riddled with cowboy operators looking to make a fast buck, it raises certain questions.

What separates Mr Michael Carlile and his company Adlib Communications from the other website developers which he is so quick to admonish? An apparent disinterest in generating easy money from e-commerce appears to be the answer.

Mr Carlile launched two popular free websites in the last year, a restaurant guide, the Adlib Eaterie, and ieSearch, a search engine which trawls the entire .ie domain. The popularity of both is largely due to the unique technology Carlile and his colleague, Mr Val Cassidy, have applied to these sites.

However, both sites were set up simply as showpieces for the technology driving them. Mr Carlile wanted to apply the same search technology to projects in his firm, Aztech Information Systems. It specialises in the design and development of Internet-based network systems.

For nearly nine years Aztech has designed tailored systems for Irish Permanent's leasing and financing software. Mr Carlile wanted to devise a model which would increase productivity for these arms of the business, while reducing staffing requirements.

Along with Mr Cassidy, he came up with a database-driven Internet model that did not require constant HTML page updates. The back office system for the Eaterie automatically updates information input by restaurateurs to the front end of the website, cutting out on time-consuming labour costs.

"It came about as a way of opening up new service channels and exploring whether a database driven site would work," says Mr Carlile.

Aztech then applied the model to Autoline, Irish Permanent's online service where car dealers apply for financing for their clients online. Now the dealers conduct all of the data entry functions, instead of form entry being duplicated by the dealers and then Irish Permanent employees. More recently, the same model has been applied to BrokerNet for mortgage applications from brokers.

While the Eaterie proved a useful model for Aztech, its latest online search engine, ieSearch, has almost limitless scope for development. In its present incarnation it trawls the entire Irish domain, accessing every Internet page, making 90 per cent of the content sourced in Ireland readily searchable.

Mr Carlile believes many of the users of ieSearch - 40 per cent of whom are US based - are missing the point of the unique engine. "They are still using keyword searches, whereas ieSearch is freeformat text-based. The entire .ie domain sits on the database, so it is not relying on someone to input keywords, all the text is already there."

Free-format text-based searches allow the user to search for a restaurant in a certain area open on Sundays, for example, and so gather more information faster. Adlib Communications - the name of Aztech's conduit for Internet research and development - recently patented this search technology. Mr Carlile and Mr Cassidy programme their own Web robots to dictate exactly what and when content is to be accessed and posted. The model is ideally suited to searches for a specific activity or domain, including country-specific recruitment sites, or medical research in specialist fields.

At the moment ieSearch receives between 150,000 and 180,000 page impressions per month. Though hardly remarkable by international standards, this is quite impressive for a barely advertised website. Already one Irish telecommunications company has approached Adlib to buy ieSearch, but it refused to sacrifice complete ownership of the technology behind the search engine.

"We know there is an income there eventually from sponsorship, and we are already syndicating the Eaterie content in the US. The next step is to set up a partnership with a large search engine so the model can be applied to activities worldwide," Mr Carlile says.

Mr Carlile's foray into these new ventures is driven by a will to retain ownership, but ensure the technology continues to facilitate near "zero administration" of each new site.

"Our bread and butter activity is database specialism conducted by a small team of highly-skilled staff. Now I've another business and a company to run, and setting it up to be administration free is time consuming."

Adlib is about to extend the Autoline site, having secured the domain name drive.ie. It will be a motoring website offering people the option of shopping for new and used cars in the Irish market online. The content will be supplied by Auto Ireland, and Mr Carlile hopes the site will be sponsored by an Irish financial institution which offers car financing deals.

With similar plans for a recruitment site, the Adlib website is gradually transforming into a "pseudo portal" as Mr Carlile terms it. The addition of news and weather features would aid this progression, but Mr Carlile believes the provision of a `kid's zone' is even more crucial.

"Ireland is very into developing websites for adults and business users, but to be a real success we should never forget kids. They probably take up about half of the time used on the home PC, and the biggest problem for them is having somewhere to go."

Mr Carlile envisages the greatest benefit of the Internet will be in the reduction of business-to-business relationship costs, but he is wary of the services being offered by some so-called website designers.

"A lot of these companies are in it to make a quick buck, and screw the client. You can't charge a company £50,000 to set up a website and do the job in four days. Most Irish websites could have been thrown up by a 16-year-old, in fact a 16-year-old is likely to do a better job."

While Mr Carlile believes many businesses have been forced to jump on the Internet wagon, their services do not necessarily suit the medium, but they have succumbed to Internet mania.

On the other hand there are other businesses ideally suited to the Internet which are not seizing the opportunity. He cites Aer Lingus as one example. "Easyjet now allows customers book their flights online and print their own tickets off the site. As a business model you can't quantify the benefit of doing that, and it is disgraceful our national carrier can't offer the same service. At this stage you can go online and book Aer Lingus flights anywhere in the world, except on the Aer Lingus site."

Over time Mr Carlile predicts the Internet will revert more towards text-based pages, as people tire of waiting to download superfluous graphics, in favour of pursuing valuable information. He sees scope for lucrative subscription revenues, as people are more prepared to pay for quality content.

Next Mr Carlile wants to set up a database driven stock site, which can be trawl all the global stock exchanges, allowing users manage and monitor their own global portfolio's through Adlib's site.

As Adlib moves into an expansionary phase, Mr Carlile is keen to stress that Adlib's primary motivation is providing quality content online over the long term, rather than moving in for a short-term killing.

"We're recruiting at the moment to do more business-to-business focused Internet development work. But we always endeavour to keep things small by hiring well paid specialists rather than a team of educated morons. We will grow as we need to grow, and it's always been that simple."