John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Thank you for that overview of the €2.5 billion investment and everything that is happening. The view of the committee since we started examining this is that everybody accepts that the train is coming down the track, as it were, but the difficulty is that there is a huge demand for broadband from SMEs and so forth. They know they must facilitate online shopping and have an online presence. At present, online shopping worldwide is valued at €5.9 billion and the target for 2020 is approximately €20 billion, so people must get into that space. Businesses are being told that continually, but it is not happening fast enough. That is the issue. Everybody agrees it will be widespread in a few years but the gap is what we do in the meantime when the economy is picking up and there is growth.

While the issue with broadband is that it is not coming into place fast enough, the issue with the mobile telephone situation is that it is regressing, particularly in the past few years. We are all aware of the number of blackspots and so forth, but it has got worse. You mentioned the situation with masts, but I presume more masts have been decommissioned in the past couple of years. This morning, I was interviewed on a radio programme about today's meeting. The programmers must have asked for comments afterwards about the regression of the mobile telephone coverage and I understand the station was flooded with texts and so forth saying this is happening. Will you address those points before I hand over to the members?