Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for missing the presentation but I have read it. I refer to the decision to allow Eircom to charge different rates for urban and rural areas. I strongly believe that communications technology will be market led but not solely market led. Otherwise there would be no need for intervention by the regulator. Eircom is the universal service provider. Which part of the universal service is being ditched here? To which part of the obligations set out in legislation are we saying "no"? In other areas, where there is a universal service obligation, for example, in An Post, which is not meeting its targets, a different forum will be used to encourage and force it to do so. In the legislation passed almost two years ago to deregulate much of An Post's operations, one of the keystones was the universal service obligation on that company. It is difficult to see how we can chip away and essentially make fish of one and flesh of another in terms of an obligation.

I welcome ComReg's work in delivering higher speed next generation broadband and the 30 megabits as standard in the Digital Agenda. I understand that not everybody will get this in the short to medium term. It is an expensive roll-out. There are minimum standards as set out in the presentation. I have seen this in west Cork and particularly in Bantry and peninsular areas. Amazon has come in and created 26 jobs where I live. It is extremely significant to provide back-up support to a company such as Amazon. Regrettably, people have lost those contracts because we could not get five megabits. We need to anchor down the idea of a universal service obligation. I am concerned at the hard decisions the Oireachtas has taken in regard to An Post and other areas. The decision to allow Eircom discriminate against other areas because it was more expensive to provide the service is a dangerous road to go down. I am not happy with it. Why do we have the regulation in the first place? We can go 100% to the market and satisfy many people in the country or we may not. There is a reason for having regulation. This is a fundamental one and I am concerned at how that decision was allowed.