Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Canney put it very well last night and he is probably one of the few Members who has direct experience of a procurement process. People should read what he said because he articulated it quite well. We did not know at the start of this process what the solution was and the competitive dialogue procurement process is the way to do that. David McCourt has said publicly in interviews that enet cannot revisit what has been agreed. I will ask the officials to come back with the detail of that.

Deputy Stanley is right that minimum speeds have been a concern for me. There are people in this city, quite close to where we sit, who have very poor or no broadband. There are pockets like this throughout the country. My commitment is to bring high-speed broadband to every single home and premises across Ireland, not just rural but urban as well. We feel the most effective way to deal with that is to have a universal service obligation so that the incumbent, or whoever is providing the network, would be legally obliged if there are one or two homes or premises that do not have access to it, to ensure they are provided with it. Over the past 12 months, the team and I have been negotiating in Brussels a provision to allow each member state to introduce a universal service obligation for a minimum standard on high-speed broadband. That was agreed in December. Initially, that will probably be at 30 Mbps, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. Quite quickly, that will increase to 100 Mbps and as demand changes it will go up.