Michelle Mulherin (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

With Ireland's digital economy growing at 16% per year, it is vital that we vigorously pursue the implementation of the national broadband plan to deliver high-speed broadband throughout our entire country otherwise rural areas, in particular, will not be able to compete for investment in jobs in this mushrooming sector and people and families in rural areas will not be able to enjoy the benefits this 21st century technology can bring to our daily lives for education, commerce and leisure purposes.

I welcome the Minister's multifaceted approach, challenging and encouraging, first and foremost, commercial broadband service providers to invest private moneys in broadband infrastructure development, with State intervention only as a last resort in the non-commercially attractive rural areas, which is predominantly the case. Therefore, the thrust of this legislation, which provides expressly for ESB laying fibre-optic cable alongside power lines which crisscross our country, is a very practical step to provide the geographical reach of broadband to these rural areas, and I compliment the Minister on it.

The recent announcement in my home county by Emerald Networks, a private company, that it intends to proceed with its plans to develop a high-speed and high-capacity, fibre-optic transatlantic cable called the "Emerald Express" between the United States and Ireland and, ultimately, on to the United Kingdom, and that it has confirmed its preferred landfall site as Killala, has generated a great deal of excitement, as the Minister can imagine. This is a project I have supported since it was mooted in 2011.

This is a massive opportunity for Mayo and for our country. It will facilitate the provision of state-of-the-art, high-speed broadband infrastructure and connectivity for Mayo and will open the county up to attract investment and to develop industry and jobs based on the information and communications technology sector, which has been identified as one of the main pillars for current and future growth in our economy and has proven to be so with job announcements nationally on a regular basis.

To operate and compete in the global village the world has become, communications infrastructure such as this is critical. While it is imperative at this point that the company sets out its plan for the route of the fibre-optic cable when it hits land and how the communities it will pass through will be affected and benefit, it is equally imperative that the Minister's Department, in conjunction with the county council, the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, under the auspices of the Action Plan for Jobs, together with private broadband service providers such as Eircom, BT, Vodafone, O2 and others, put in place plans to maximise the benefit to as much of the county as possible and in particular towns such as Killala, Ballina and Crossmolina, which immediately adjoin the landfall site, and Belmullet where it was originally thought the cable might land. We already have fibre-optic cable in the ground in parts of the county, which was laid along much of the gas pipeline and we have metropolitan area networks in towns such as Ballina and Kiltimagh, which can be connected to the transatlantic fibre-optic cable.

I note the Government has recently obtained the consent of the EU Commission for the use of existing publicly-funded, fibre-optic cable for such a project. These are exciting possibilities especially in the old Asahi brownfield site in Killala in the realm of cloud computing and data centres where it is also proposed to develop also a biomass - combined heat and power - power plant.

In a nutshell, in light of the announcement by Emerald Networks that it would develop this transatlantic cable, I ask that we immediately examine where this cable will go once it hits land, how the benefit can be maximised for the towns surrounding it - Killala, Ballina, Crossmolina and further afield - how it can be part of a solution to improve connectivity for the county and part of the realisation of the Minister's plan, namely, that there would be high-speed broadband connectivity and infrastructure throughout the country under the national broadband plan. I ask that the Minister work with Mayo County Council and the Minister, Deputy Richard Bruton, under the Action Plan for Jobs, and commercial broadband service providers to map out how we might achieve this connectivity and use some of the existing fibre, which can complement what is provided in this legislation, which would see the ESB putting in place fibre-optic cable along distribution power lines. This is part of that formula and it is something to which we need to address our minds for the maximum benefit for County Mayo and for the country.

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