Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

For the record and the information of the public and everyone in this House, I want to reiterate the point I made earlier. Deputy Stanley arrived late. I had my hand up at an early point but the Vice Chairman called him before me. I get it that there is a pecking order in this system in terms of the size of one's party, but men in this House should get it that there is sexism in politics. It may be subconscious but it does exist. In a situation where one woman in a committee is ready to speak but everyone else is a man, the Vice Chairman should at least take that into consideration. I say that with respect to everyone in this House, but I want to put on the record that I see that going on repeatedly.

It is all over the media that the national broadband plan is a hames, that it is in chaos and that it has received a major blow. I understand why the Minister is putting up a robust defence of himself, his office, his officials and the entire project, but at some point it has to be admitted that when it is clear that the national broadband plan will now cost us possibly up to 60% more than the original estimate when it was rolled out a year ago, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

It is very clear to me, as someone who watches the way companies operate, and we all do that because we live in a society that is dominated by companies in everything we do, whether it is building a house, a swimming pool, a school or walking down the road and seeing who is fixing the pipes or laying tarmacadam, that all this is being done by private companies. Everything in this State has been privatised, and that goes to the heart of what is wrong here.

The Minister did an elegant job of comparing the national broadband plan to the roll-out of the rural electrification programme. He stated: "Just as by building Ardnacrusha nearly 90 years ago, electricity unlocked the potential of a young country, and ensured its survival, broadband will unlock our potential today as Europe's youngest population." All that sounds lovely. The problem is that when we electrified the country, the State owned the ESB. It did not have to put up with a competitive, chaotic market. I do not know if Eir threatened potential litigation against the State if it did not get access to those 300,000 premises in towns and villages because it was doing it anyway.

We may find out some day, but it was given access to those premises in towns and villages to lay cables. No one really cares about the boreens, bogs and far away bits that come after that-----