Mr. David Walsh:

I wish to make a point about remote working and about Senator Devine's comments on broadband because they are completely related. There is a cultural change happening in Irish businesses where business owners now see the value of employees working remotely, ideally from home. It ticks all the boxes around traffic congestion, car travel and so on. It is, however, all dependent on broadband. I deal with companies that measure output not input. They do not care about a person's location provided he or she does the right job and works within the parallel lines of the ethics and culture of the organisation. Broadband is critical. Consider where we are located in Carlow town. We are very fortunate that we have broadband for our communication to the world. Our company does remote video monitoring. If I went to Tullow or Rathvilly, I would be scuttled because broadband is not available. We have 200 people working in Ireland, of whom some 70% or 80% are working in and within 25 miles of Carlow. I would say that 75% of those people could not work from home even if we wanted them to work from home, because they do not have the communications. The roll-out of the broadband plan is critical. That matter was not raised at this meeting because it has been discussed so often. We have been beating our drum on this issue for long enough. The roll-out needs to happen. If we want employees to work from home or remotely, then broadband quality has to be the same in Rathvilly as it is in Dublin.