The government has its proposals for regulating and possibly taking control of the IE Domain Registry (MS Word document containing links to relevant sections) out for consultation at the moment. Responses to the consultation have to be in before 20 January 2006. The relevant text is also reproduced at the bottom of this post.
I have now been actively involved with issues around the governance of the IE domain for longer than anyone, and my personal opinion is this. I am very sad that the Irish Internet community in general and the boards of UCD and IE Domain Registry Ltd. in particular have allowed things to end up in this sorry state where an outside regulator has to be given powers to enforce its will on the system. As a community we should get together and sort this out. We shouldn’t have to wait for the government to come in and regulate our mess for us. Government involvement will ultimately result in more red tape, slower progress during a time of rapid technological change and higher costs.