Perhaps I'm posting kind of late in the day? However ...

I have noted one or two very odd things about the .ie domain both in the distant past and in the more recent present, like today, for instance, which compel me to post. So fix yourself a ball of malt and attend to my sorry tale of woe.

To begin with, I looked into acquiring mullan.ie way back when Pluto was a planet and a couple of years before M. Busschots wrote this article.

It was the summer of 2002. I will never forget my frustration and annoyance as the shanties of Ankara emptied into the streets, roaring past my doorstep in celebration of the national team's entry to the World Cup semi-finals and rupturing my concentration as a result. It was then that I learned I was ineligible for mullan.ie because:

a) The domain was apparently taken ("ho-hum", I hear you say, but see "ha-ha" below).

b) I was at the time (and still am) resident in Turkey.

I said 'apparently' to point 'a' because, ha-ha, I well recall that apart from a good old 404 (meaning 'Forbidden' to apprentice nerds) the domain was inaccessible to my relentless attempts at access. Indeed it remains so today - the first time that I felt compelled to revisit our de facto family seat on the interwebz since that summer of Turkey's sorry disappointment eight years ago.

As far as point 'b' goes, not having the faintest trace of an exotic gene to spruce up my thoroughly Irish character, I still felt it was something of a bummer to find the powers that be on the old sod would deny me the privilege of their parochial domainity when I was happily prepared to feed their exorbitant craving for paperwork with a copy of my birth certificate. Lamb sakes, I couldn't have dibbly-doo.ie even if I were gung-ho for such a rash project.

It's the interwebz we're talking about here, for Christ's sake, what does it matter where in the world I park my sorry ass?

Well, I'm beginning to wonder if, perhaps, shenanigans are not afoot? (I would prefer to believe in any amount of skullduggery over sheer incompetence and a shameful lack of imagination on my countrymen's part.)

Going back to point 'a', I have had occasion to browse more than a few .ie domains during the course of my protracted Anatolian sojourn and I must say that it is very disturbing to see how often Firefox throws up the 'The connection has timed out' page adorned as it is with that hopeful but nevertheless ineffectual 'Try Again' button. This does not happen with any frequency on other domains (I would happily forgo .ro, .ru and - Heaven help us - .bg, for instance, but sadly addresses of such provenance remain hopelessly robust in their facility to point and ping and garner any amount of trojans as a consequence).

Apart from my estrangement from the clan on mullan.ie, other sites to which I have been refused access only today include letshost.ie and www.countmeout.ie (not that I really give a damn for leaving the church in Ireland - I doubt if Jesus would either). I have found several examples recently - to the point where the issue has become something of a recurring theme of CaitlÃn NÃ UallachÃ¡in's internet presence as viewed from abroad.

Whatever is going on, I should say that at this point I wouldn't take the gift of a .ie domain if they were serving it up completely free with unlimited email addresses, lucrative advertising opportunities and a competitive hosting package thrown in.