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

On the telecommunications side, this proposal from the Commission, called the "Connected Continent: Building a Telecoms Single Market", is a package that emerged as recently as September last year. It is phenomenally complex, very comprehensive and, from the point of view of the Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, deserves urgent attention. It is not fair to say there is not an agenda. There is very much an agenda and a focus, but the issues thrown up are of great complexity, given the variations in different member states and the different considerations that we would have ourselves. Indeed, I believe the committee received a presentation on this from my officials shortly after the publication of the report and the committee members noted an opinion after that in which they expressed reservations.

Without committing myself to it in full, they are reservations that we would broadly agree with. For example, as I said in my introductory remarks, we regard the issue of spectrum as a public good and a national resource. We regard spectrum as strategically vital and that we ought to maintain as much sovereign direction over it as we can. The last tranche of spectrum auctioned a little over a year ago resulted in a very healthy interest by the big players in the market and an investment of some €855 million, which I take to be a vote of confidence in the economy for the future. It was very significant. I am all in favour of co-ordination and so forth of spectrum policy as well as every other policy within a Single Market and a Union, but I believe we should make haste slowly and protect our national interests to ensure that they are not eroded in any way.

Apart from that, the reason for the laborious progress is that the working group must tease through a measure such as this in line-by-line detail. Given the divergences within the Union at present, the different perspectives and the view of the sector itself, it is inevitable that progress would be slow. We are all in favour of some aspects of it. For example, Germany and the United Kingdom have latterly suggested that we might consider abstracting out some of the elements, but the attitude of the Commissioner to date is that it is a package, as she sees it, and we must consider it in its totality. There are welcome aspects. The committee would welcome the changes that are imminent in roaming charges from 1 July, for example. They are quite significant in terms of the decreases for consumers and so forth.