Mr. Colm McColgan:

Yes. That is not saying that some broadband things may not be done but it is not mentioned or given the same priority. We did so well out of the INTERREG programme in terms of improving infrastructure that it might present some kind of a problem for us.

In the past the challenge was to get big fibre linked broadband into an area but now the challenge is to bring high speed broadband to houses, farms and small businesses located in rural areas. The matter is being looked at very seriously in Finland and Sweden and I have an example from the latter. We know that the market will look after larger towns and cities and the same applies to the Border region. A lot of people in Donegal and the Derry City Council rural area live in the country where introducing broadband is quite expensive. There is a view that high speed wireless will be a solution for rural areas. Yesterday it was announced in the newspapers that parts of Dublin will get 1,000 Mbps. We think that a problem will be created if one region gets 1,000 Mbps while another gets between 40 or 50 Mbps. In Sweden researchers have analysed such a challenge because fibre cables are being put into farms and houses. The Swedish model is quite different from the Irish model. In Sweden most of the fibre networks are owned by the public sector which leases them back to private telecom operators in order for them to deliver services. That is quite different from the way the telecom system has evolved here in Ireland.

The next slide shows a county located in the north of Sweden which is remote and very sparsely populated when compared with anywhere here in Ireland. The next slide is a more detailed map and the green spots represent small communities that have built their own fibre network. Between 80% and 90% of the cost of deploying fibre networks relates to digging and not the fancy technologies or fibre cables. Typically, in Sweden, a local authority or co-op would take ownership of the project. Therefore, it would help to plan the route in consultation with local communities, it would ensure there was sufficient backhaul and it would train local people with JCBs and tractors how to dig appropriate sized trenches, how to fit special equipment on the back of their machines and how to do the work.

In these times when we are strapped for cash at national level, both in the North and in the South, we think this is a model worth trying here. We have engaged and are talking to the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, DARD, in Northern Ireland and it is taking a good hard look at it. We had the idea of piloting a trial in quite a rural area straddling the Border. We could use the pilot to figure out whether what the Swedes have done would work in Ireland. It does pay for itself over a longer time period than the private sector would demand.