Seán Conlan (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. I am interested in the work they are doing in the north west. I live in County Monaghan. It is clear that the same issues apply along the Border in counties Armagh, Monaghan, Tyrone, Fermanagh and Cavan. The key for me is that every home in the area should have access to fast broadband. It has been mentioned that many people commute to institutes of further education each day. If they do not have decent broadband access when they come home in the evening, it is a major problem. Over the last two years, the Government has tried to provide extra money to ensure broadband is provided in schools in counties Monaghan and Cavan. That work is ongoing. I think a similar investment has to be made in each household. We should be trying to focus on how that can be done at the lowest possible cost. I was interested to hear what was said about the Swedish example. It has been pointed out that we have poles all over the country and that it is not as if we have to start developing new infrastructure in that regard.

Roaming charges and poor 3G coverage are other issues for people in Monaghan and the other Border counties. The nature of the landscape in the Border area where I live tends to lead to a situation where coverage is lost when one goes around every turn. What kind of solutions have been found in the north west to deal with these challenges? We need to deal with them across the whole Border region. I am very interested in Project Kelvin, which goes through Monaghan town right beside the education campus. We invested €50 million in the development of the campus over the last two years. Clearly, we want to get the maximum benefit from the education campus in terms of further education for people in the region. We would like to be able to utilise Project Kelvin. I would like to know whether the witnesses have found solutions that will facilitate that. When it was first announced with great fanfare, we felt it would be a panacea to all our ills.

It seems it does not mesh well with much other infrastructure. Have solutions been found in the region to overcome those problems?