Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I cannot agree more with Deputy Coffey. The exciting point about this new technology is that it offers the regions an opportunity for local development that they never had previously. If we can improve the quality of broadband interconnectivity in provincial Ireland, it will stimulate the creation of local employment that has not been possible in the past 100 years of industrial policy. It is not that we are suddenly going to start landing major foreign investment projects into remote parts. There will be some of that but it will be mainly small companies being spawned to provide services of different kinds online while allowing people to live where they were reared.

The broadband debate at the European Council will not be along the lines that Deputy Coffey has suggested, but it is happening here. We are in the middle of a detailed mapping exercise which is required as a result of the fact that the commercial sector will not provide high quality bandwidth to the regions. There is a very healthy and fierce rivalry in urban areas, with high quality service provision which would compete with most EU member states and is better than some. That is not the case for more than 20% of the population, and due to our population density, a great deal more than 20% of our landmass. It is certainly not up to what will be needed given the increased uptake and the extraordinary developments in the technology and its applications.

The MANs initially were slow to catch on. That is no longer the case, however. It is no exaggeration to say 50% of them were not lit as recently as two years ago. That is no longer the case. The operating franchise recently changed hands, with a new American company in charge. It is its intention to stimulate further usage of the MANs. I do not believe the company in question would have made the purchase, which cost it a lot of money, if it did not see market possibilities.

As a result of the Cabinet approving the requirement for State investment in the south east, we have to comply with state aid rules and make a submission of considerable detail to Brussels. Every tract of inhabited land is being mapped for this submission. We are determined to deliver a high quality service to rural areas. In saying that, I have the support of the Cabinet sub-committee that supervises infrastructure. We do not think anything about the billions of euro spent on roads, electricity and water provision. Yet broadband, like the roll-out of electrification in the 1950s, has the capacity to lift rural areas.

The discussions on the interconnector with France are in the early stages. It is one of the projects of common interest to which I referred earlier.

The energy efficiency fund has been established to focus on energy efficiency in public and commercial buildings. The Department has put €35 million into the fund, with pledges for more than that from the private sector. Last week, the preferred bidder was approved and the legal provisions are now being put in place. It will manage the fund. We will see if we will be able to leverage further private sector funding or use the European Investment Bank as a source of further finance to replenish and increase the fund.

That decision was approved last week.

I agree with the point about cyber-security and critical infrastructure in particular. As I mentioned earlier, we have a group equivalent to the computer emergency response teams, or CERTs as they are known in Europe, and we are examining this issue.

In respect of the single telecommunications market, I cannot see any set of circumstances in which we would pool spectrum. It is a national asset and I cannot see circumstances in which we would want to agree to that.