Mr. Brian Boyle:

The collaborative scheme announced yesterday between the ESB and Vodafone is welcome. Any significant improvement in telecommunications capacity, especially where it involves fibre to the home is welcome. The limitation of the scheme is that it is intended to be rolled out only to centres of high population of 4,000 to 5,000 plus. It does however answer a question that has been unresolved in that the way to deliver high speed broadband is through fibre to the home. There has been some discussion, which is still ongoing, as to whether fixed wireless or even 4G could be the answer.

The experience from Europe and elsewhere is that is not the answer. The answer to delivering high-speed broadband is a fibre-optic network to the home. Perhaps one of the benefits of yesterday's scheme will be to get that argument over the line in this country.

Another scheme was announced also, in March or April this year, to bring high-speed broadband - the use of a fibre backbone was mentioned in the initial documentation - to rural areas. A range of townlands was mentioned for each county, with 40 alone in County Donegal. However, there was little detail as to how this scheme would be rolled out. If we have a collective role to play, perhaps the committee could suggest to the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources that the model being used in the collaborative venture between the ESB and Vodafone in the bigger towns be the model also for the rural areas. As Deputy Pringle said, there is a huge advantage in using the publicly owned ESB network, which services every house in the land, to deliver fibre connectivity. However, it would be a shame if that scheme was delayed pending delivery of this other scheme, because we could be looking at a long timescale.

Mention was made of the Scandinavian model and whether the fibre cables should be underground or overhead. I saw an example in Slovenia last year in which one of our partner projects used both models. Networks were built in the ground and fibre was also run on the electricity network, depending on what suited the circumstances. Perhaps a combination of models would be suitable. The important factor from our perspective is that the policy decision is made and that we figure out a way to do it quickly.