Digital Town
.ie Digital Town Awards Winners and Runners-up
Relive the story of each year of the .ie Digital Town awards below:
The .ie Digital Town awards were created by .ie in 2021, as part of a broader investment in the .ie Digital Town Programme encouraging the uptake and use of internet and digital technologies for businesses, citizens and communities. The awards recognise and reward digitally inspired projects run by towns and local community groups across several competitive categories.
In 2024, the overall .ie Digital Town Awards winner was a collaborative project entitled ‘Driving Digital Education in the Midlands’ which aims to embed digital education programmes in schools in Laois, Offaly, Westmeath and Longford. As an area that has been directly impacted by the green transition, the development of future skills in these communities to meet new industry demands is essential. The project has seen industry, government, and education stakeholders coming together to collaborate on digital education programmes for students and young people across the region. This project was also the winner in the Digital Education category.
In 2023, 22 town and community digital projects were recognised – winners and runners-up across the seven main categories, three special category winners and one overall prize winner. The .ie Agri-Tech award was introduced for the first time this year and its inaugural winner, Clonmel’s Smart Skills for Farming Communities was also named as the overall winner of the .ie Digital Town Awards 2023. This digital project helps farmers use new technologies to make their work easier, save time and money as well as improving the sustainability and profitability of their farm. The programme also delivers very practical digital training in areas such as soil fertility technology, grassland management technology, time and labour-saving technology, farm management systems, and handy Apps.
In 2022, Piltown in Co. Kilkenny was announced as the overall winner of the 2022 .ie Digital Town Awards for its ‘Taking Charge of our Digital Future’ project. Piltown is believed to be Ireland’s first community owned and managed FTTP ‘fibre to the premises’ network and has resulted in the creation of a local digital hub and community centre that serves 37 groups in the area.
In 2021, Dingle Peninsula’s ‘Reimagining Creatively through Digital’ project was announced as overall winner at the inaugural .ie Digital Town Awards. At a virtual awards ceremony, the town was chosen from the five town category winners as overall winner. The focus of the Dingle team was on promoting innovation and imagining new ways of doing things through digital. Among the highlights was a pilot initiative to increase sustainability and productivity by collecting ‘real-time’ data using sensor technology such as current and predicted weather and soil conditions, and grass growth rates.