Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 4, between lines 32 and 33, to insert the following:
“4. (1) In circumstances where either the Board or the Board in conjunction with another company, while engaging in the business of providing electronic communications either under section 2 or section 3 or both, advertises specific broadband speeds to the consumer, the Board and or the company in question shall be obliged to provide such speeds to the consumer.
(2) Any person who fails to comply with subsection (1) shall be liable to penalty by way of a fine, the amount of which shall be prescribed by the Minister by way of regulation.”.

The 1927 Act provides for access to land and property by the ESB. In 99.9% of cases this work is carried out in a fair and reasonable manner. Concern has been expressed about the lack of an appeals system under which landowners can seek to have their land, be that agricultural or otherwise, returned to its state prior to the carrying out of works by the ESB or third party contractor on its behalf. I acknowledge the Minister's comments in this regard during his Second Stage contribution. However, we could explore what could be put into primary legislation to eliminate ambiguity and ensure there are clear guidelines as to who has access to the lines so that any damage done is quickly rectified or the landowner quickly compensated.

The first comfort I can give the Deputy is that it is crystal clear that any access to land that proves to be necessary can only be done by ESB staff under the present arrangement and there is no broadening of that. So the question of unreasonable intrusion onto lands by a third party does not arise.

The ESB has, over many years, put in place specific policies and codes of practice on accessing private lands, as the Deputy has just outlined. It is the ESB's policy to compensate landowners for any land damage and-or crop loss it causes in placing or repairing a line. It compensates landowners for loss of ability to develop their lands in the event that the land was purchased prior to installing the ESB infrastructure.

Agreements on these matters are reached in the vast majority of cases without recourse to the wayleave rights currently available to the ESB in the electricity market. It is only in exceptional cases that wayleave rights are invoked. This is consistent with the strong degree of protection for landowners through the existing statutory right to arbitration and compensation under section 53 of the Electricity Supply Act 1927, as amended, which can be exercised prior to, during or at the conclusion of works by or on behalf of the ESB.

The wayleave rights proposed in this Bill are more restrictive for the electronic communications infrastructure developer than for electricity purposes. The ESB is not permitted to install any new poles or other ground based infrastructure to support overhead electronic communications lines. It is limited to accessing land to install electronic communications lines on existing poles and other support infrastructure of the electricity network. I have a photographic display which might help Deputies to get a bird's eye view of what is envisaged. If the amount of compensation for such access cannot be agreed, the landowner can refer the matter to the statutory arbitration procedure which is currently available in the case of installing electricity infrastructure and the decision of the arbitrator is binding on both parties.

Having carefully considered the amendment proposed by the Deputy it is my view that this is more appropriate for consideration in the context of the wider ESB powers as set out in the Electricity Supply Acts, as amended. I do not believe that such an obligation should be conferred in isolation. In other words, I do not believe it is appropriate to confer this obligation only in respect of the ESB's telecommunications activities. I have asked my departmental officials to bear this in mind in the context of any future plans to consolidate the existing body of electricity legislation.

The photograph shows in a fairly striking way the intention to use the existing supply system to run the cable as an additional cable and that may only be done by ESB staff. They may not take feeds off that and develop new lines because that would be the shortest shortcut; it is the existing supply system infrastructure.