Ms Rena Donaghey:

My name is Rena Donaghey and I am a public representative for the Inishowen Peninsula. I have been a county councillor for 15 years and I am aware of many of the challenges in Inishowen. We have a population of more than 40,000. The peninsula. which is equivalent in size to counties Louth or Leitrim, is very rural. The lack of broadband is debilitating for primary and secondary schools and students cannot achieve their potential. While I do not want to rehearse what has already been said, these are the problems I am hearing about on the doorsteps on a daily basis. We have talked about businesses and SMEs. It is difficult to keep our graduates at home when we have such a poor broadband system. Yesterday's announcement, while it was welcome, does not do anything for me or the 43,000 people whom Deputy Charlie McConalogue and I represent. It is for larger towns, it is regional rather than rural. Buncrana, the town I represent, has a population of 4,000 but is not one of the 50 towns listed. I am the mother of two students who cannot use the Internet properly because it is too slow for uploading bigger files. The examples that Mr. Colm McColgan has given are very real.