Mr. Colm McColgan:

There were many questions so I will kick off before letting in others. I will make some general points before coming to the more specific questions. We are most concerned about rural areas and we are not really concerned about Letterkenny, Derry or Monaghan town. Those places will be fine in the medium term, although there are challenges. Everything will be sorted out with them. We have discovered with our work in Europe that the debate has moved on. It is no longer a debate about putting a fibre-optic connection between Letterkenny and Derry or between Monaghan town and Armagh. That is happening, and I appreciate there are some temporary or short-term challenges but the real debate now has used to the end users. These are people in rural houses, farms and small, cultural businesses in very remote areas.

The most advanced regions are moving to putting fibre in people's premises, or otherwise they will be left behind. An article in yesterday's newspaper indicated that parts of Dublin would get 1,000 Mbps into houses but very remote farms in Finland and Sweden are already getting that type of service. These regions have raised the bar, and as Deputy McConalogue mentioned, rural areas are becoming even more remote, and if drastic action is not taken, the communities will not survive. I am not suggesting that could happen here, as we are much more densely populated than Finland and Sweden, but that is a driving concept for those countries. As there is so much fibre going around the place, the mobile telecom operators are asking to put a 3G or 4G antenna on farm buildings, as there is a local fibre-optic cable. It is a reversal of the thinking behind the concept.

In the United Kingdom they have tried to bring fibre to as many places as possible while covering other areas with wireless coverage. In other countries, fibre is being installed everywhere and operators are using that by paying farmers to host 3G equipment. Not only do these farmers have fantastic speed into houses because of fibre but they also have magnificent wireless coverage. The drumlins in Cavan, the hills of Donegal and the Sperrins have very bad coverage but it is becoming less of an issue.

We are very interested in what the ESB is doing as a technical solution, and there is an ESB cable going into every house in the South; there is an electricity cable going into every house in the North as well. It is a way of tackling the technical issue. In many of the places we work, it is already being done, and although I have noted remarks that a certain party is the first to do it, that is not necessarily true. People will use the best technical solution and we would love the ESB to do that. We are talking about a difference in the approach. If the ESB approach could be applied to every house in Ireland, it would work. Nevertheless, it is driven from the centre, and with the experience we have had over the past 20 or 30 years, by the time the work hits Malin Head or parts of Kerry, it will be years down the line. We are suggesting a change in approach, with local communities being given the chance to see if the Scandinavian model will work here. It could be done more cheaply and faster, and it would not be subject to the vagaries of central government planning. We know that is very important, as it is in Sweden, but more power is given to local areas. We saw a slide earlier detailing what we were able to achieve on a cross-Border basis in the north west. We were able to increase the cross-Border fibre connections from zero to four between 2000 and 2008 with the support of central government and councils getting together. Many community groups were also involved.

This approach will work and we have spoken to people in the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in the North. They seem quite receptive to it. The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in the North deals with telecoms issues, and telecoms regulators are very conservative people. They have become even more conservative over the past ten years and they do not like these kinds of solutions. They want to get £500,000 of public money and put a project to tender. Usually, the existing telecoms operators will win such projects. That is a good solution for many places but this approach must be allied to this other approach.

The announcements by the ESB yesterday will not have any impact in rural areas, and they are designed for towns of above 4,000 people. We understand the process will only apply in Letterkenny in Donegal, which is a town of 10,000 or 12,000 people. The announcement by Vodafone and the ESB is totally market-driven, which is welcome, although it will only work in the bigger towns and cities. They have done their calculations.