Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I think we agree to put the Department and the investment in broadband onto the work programme in terms of lessons learnt from the past and where we are going. The Government programme divides the country up into various areas, including what is known as an amber area that will be subject to the new contract where there is only one bidder. My experience is that private companies who provide broadband commercially outside of the scheme are eating into the amber areas on the edge of towns. I fear the Department is trundling along thinking the amber areas will have X number of people and are constructing the contract on that basis. By the time the work is ready to start a lot of cherry-picking will have happened in the amber areas and there will be fewer houses available for incorporation into the plan. Broadband is a dynamic issue and is not fixed while tenders and revised tenders take place. The other operators are eating into the good bits of the amber areas as we speak and by the time a contract is signed the total population of the amber areas requiring broadband will have changed from today's configuration. Even though we are talking about future expenditure I hope the lesson has been learnt from the previous process. We will put broadband issues into the work programme.