Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for the update. I welcome the progress that has been made in the national broadband plan. Penetration levels are increasing and they are projected to increase substantially up to 2018, according to the plan. However, the challenge is also increasing. Demand generated by the use of mobile devices, tablets and so on is putting pressure on capacity. I commend the Minister and his officials on how swiftly they acted on the enabling legislation, which has led to announcements such as today's. It was important to do that ground-work. We are moving on to the implementation and roll-out phase, which will result in significant benefits, which I welcome.

We had the rural broadband scheme and the national broadband scheme - the current schemes. Has a value-for-money audit been carried out to establish the penetration levels we have achieved with the roll-out of those schemes? The Minister has identified €350 million of funding with half coming from the public purse and half from commercial interests. It is important to get the best bang for our buck and I ask the Minister to elaborate slightly on that.

Is there a point of contact for members of the public or commercial interests where they can access the information on the plans and where it is being rolled out in an easy way? Is there a simple one-stop-shop point of access for that information?

I will be a bit parochial. The south east is one of the only regions that does not have access to the dark fibre cable. I believe the Minister previously told me that we would be depending on commercial interests to extend that to the south east. Has an evaluation been done to see if there is a commercial interest in extending the dark fibre broadband cable to the south east where it can link up with the MANs, the metropolitan area networks? As we all know access in urban as well as rural areas is vital for commercial interests and business. I will continue to pursue the matter. For balanced regional development it is important to have infrastructure in those areas.