Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Fleming is my neighbour. I welcome the representatives from the Department and ComReg. I agree with a lot of what has been said up to now, particularly what Deputy Helen McEntee has said. Both organisations have successfully managed to let the operators off the hook, particularly regarding rural broadband, by focusing on population rather than an area. There is a glib estimate that 1.7 million people live in rural areas if we accept there is a population of between 37% to 40% of people living in rural areas. That is a considerable number of rural people. Reference was made, a while ago, to broadband connectivity from a rural point of view. Let us look at our population basis. Ireland has an average of 65 people per km2. Finland with 18 people per km2 does not have this problem due to planning and has a single point of contact, as far as I know, to deal with the issue. Ireland, thanks to the legacy of the botched privatisation of Eircom, now has a dogs dinner of a telecommunication set-up. The State's utility was privatised and now another State utility has been asked to come in, through legislation, to take up the slack. I refer to the ESB in commercial partnership with an operator. That is the kernel of the problem.

Reference was made to Albert Reynolds, in his recent obituary, to the way he revolutionised the delivery of telephones to rural Ireland in the 1970s. That is the same sort of issue that we now have. The difference is that we had a State utility in those days that could be directed to do the work. We do not have that option now because this country made a bags of privatisation. Ireland is now ranked just under Algeria for its number of fixed subscription broadband connections, a fact that was stated in a recently published report that I read somewhere. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where I read the statistic. Ireland is ranked lower than Algeria for broadband connectivity which tells us the level of interest placed on the technology. I do not believe people take connectivity seriously.

Reference was made to e-Net, for instance, and its role in the metropolitan area networks, MANs. I welcome its role and the fact that four towns are being connected. There are a lot of other towns in the metropolitan area networks. When will they be reached? Significant State investment was made into installing MAN cables around the country. In a lot of cases people have very different views on how effective they are.

The witnesses mentioned encouraging people to move to 4G which was going to be the be all and end all. In a lot of the places that I represent we just like G because we have bogband in a lot of cases. Dial-up was faster than what we have in some areas because we do not have a service. It is all well and good identifying places like Caherciveen, which is in Deputy Tom Fleming's constituency. However, there are places with poor coverage in my constituency due to the planning process where people objected to masts, and everything like that, which they were freely entitled to do. There are huge areas in my constituency where we are never going to have any real level of coverage unless a genuine attempt is made to look at existing infrastructure such as have fibre optic cables run along defunct railways lines, the existing Eircom infrastructure, and the existing ESB infrastructure being looked at in terms of fibre to the wall. Such initiatives are really the only way to deliver a service.

Deputy McEntee is quite right. It is all well and good that 95% of the people have coverage but the remaining 5% probably live in very remote areas. To be honest, I do not know if there is a more hostile landscape than the tundra located inside the Arctic Circle and I would not equate Deputy Fleming's constituency with the Arctic Circle. If the Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian governments can provide broadband coverage in the Arctic Circle then why can we not do so here?

I have asked the following question here before. Why do we not have a single agency to roll-out broadband? We have e-Net, the operators, the Department and ComReg. It seems that there is a huge amount of talk but very little action. That situation manifested itself again with another botched announcement during the summer on the ending of the rural broadband scheme. It was announced as though it was a surprise but it was no surprise because the scheme was due to end. The announcement could not have been done in a worse way as it sounded like the service was cut. It was not cut. It just reached its natural conclusion.

I have very little confidence that things will improve anytime soon. Will the EU State aid rules apply to extending MAN cables further?

Every town in the country has been dug up to install water meters. We seem to have a disjointed approach to installing infrastructure. When a sewer is laid we seem to be averse to also installing a cable duct at the same time and later the sewer will be dug up again by a private operator, the ESB or whoever. There is no joined up thinking about infrastructure. There is a multiplicity of agencies which is evidenced by the fact that so many people have attended here today. I do not believe this matter, for areas outside of the M50, is being taken seriously.