A unique system which aims to make the Internet more useful to local communities has been launched in Ireland.

Local Ireland (www.local.ie), backed by a £4 million investment from Telecom Eireann, has developed the first online infrastructure into which every individual, organisation, parish and county in Ireland can feed.

According to Mr Peter Mooney, general manager of Local Ireland: "This project is the equivalent of the rural electrification schemes of the 1950s and 1960s. It is going to run the digital age into homes all over Ireland."

The aim of Local Ireland is to create a comprehensive database of local information, making it the primary gateway to Ireland through the Internet. The plan is to eventually generate revenue from advertising and sales which will be shared between co-operatives, content publishers and the Local Ireland organisation. Unlike larger gateway sites, like Yahoo, which select and publish their own information, Local Ireland makes the local source the publisher and content owner. By January it will employ 40 people, with six full-time co-operative officers on the road gathering information from county bodies, libraries and community groups.

Mr Gerry McGovern, chief executive of Local Ireland said: "I do believe in 20 years every country will need this. The current search methods are collapsing because of the rate of growth. Alta Vista, one of the biggest search engines only registers 28 per cent of sites on the Web. Like every book today needs an index and table of contents, we are doing the same by developing a standard structure for finding information about Ireland online."