Something unexpected happened during the time I was away: Eircom has, astonishingly enough, upgraded my DSL connection. I'm now regularly getting download speeds of 1.5 Mbps and sometimes more. The upload speed appears to be stuck at 128Kbs though, which is still a problem for Video/Voice communications.

I still have to check that they are not charging me more too (not likely, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit), but good news anyway. :)