Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As a former member of the committee, I thank the Chair and members for the invitation to discuss the smart community initiative.

The Internet and digital technologies are transforming the way people live and work. However, figures from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, show that one in seven people have never used the Internet. Such individuals cite a lack of skills and the belief that they do not need the Internet as the key barriers to using it.

At a foundation level, minimising the digital divide is about ensuring broadband connectivity for the population in the first instance. Advances in 5G technology will enable wider geographic coverage. Thereafter, basic foundation skills and literacy will enable people to discover the constructive applications of digital technology and content. Addressing the foundations of the digital divide involves, in the main, reaching out to the most marginalised in society and helping them to participate in a digital society. The digital skills for citizens scheme of the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment provides basic digital skills classes to help people take their first step online. However, classroom training alone will not suffice to tackle the problem, with the CSO indicating that approximately 16% to 18% of the population are affected.

Any new interventions must be sustainable to provide the ongoing supports required to address and maintain inclusion in a digital world.

Communities are at the heart of everything we do, be it digital or otherwise. We are working across both Departments to provide communities with a better chance of making choices for themselves. To succeed in developing communities where connectivity and digitisation are a seamless part of everyday life, partnerships between Departments, private industry and communities are necessary. By working together and combining existing assets and resources under a shared vision, communities can maximise the reach and impact of schemes and programmes.

The smart community initiative is a new approach that will bring exposure to digital content and technology into the community and support the discovery of the value of digital technologies in the daily lives of people. With this in mind, the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, together with the Department of Rural and Community Development, engaged with senior representatives from organisations that had expressed an interest in this approach such as the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Bank of Ireland, Musgraves, An Post, the HSE, the library services and the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA.

All of these organisations demonstrated their willingness to be an active partner and a smart community action group was established. The group agreed that every community faces different challenges and identified four key pillars to be considered, namely, basic skills, economic well-being, physical and mental well-being, and history, culture and heritage.

The action group agreed to pilot the smart community initiative in Tubbercurry, County Sligo. Factors taken into account in selecting Tubbercurry included the presence of strong active community groups, a local presence of all the stakeholders in the action group, the availability of high-speed broadband, co-location of a post office and a SuperValu, and the existence of an open library, which has been funded by the Department of Rural and Community Development under the libraries capital programme.

A Tubbercurry smart community committee was established to test the feasibility of the initiative and develop a number of local activities. The committee organised a launch event for the Tubbercurry smart community on 18 January, which highlighted some of the supports available locally and the opportunities provided by embracing technology. One of these opportunities is the chance to promote Tubbercurry as a remote working location. Ireland, like all other countries, is being increasingly affected by digital content and technology, with 6% of Ireland’s GDP and 116,000 jobs being accounted for by digital technologies in the economy. The opportunities digital technologies represent for Ireland are significant. Ireland has the raw materials needed for success, including the presence of leading digital businesses, a young educated English-speaking workforce and high levels of international connectivity.

The Tubbercurry smart community committee is working with a volunteer movement called Grow Remote to host a conference in Tubbercurry on 16 April 2019. Grow Remote is about connecting jobs to the people and creating a remote community. It is about choice and when jobs are mobile it provides opportunities for communities to compete. I welcome the representatives of Grow Remote, who will speak to the committee later.

Over the coming months we will assess the impact of becoming a smart community on Tubbercurry, will record lessons learned and will develop criteria to identify key elements required to become a smart community, as well as a set of metrics to be used to measure success. However, one pilot is not sufficient to test and build a robust, sustainable initiative, and we hope to trial this initiative in a further three locations this year. The locations chosen will include at least one urban location to ensure that the model used for establishing a smart community can be adapted to meet the different needs of communities nationwide. We will examine existing infrastructure, connectivity and will explore new ways of delivering Government services to enhance the user experience. The Department of Rural and Community Development, which co-funds the employment of a broadband officer in each local authority to the tune of €42,000 per local authority this year, will be key to rolling out further trials.

I recently met broadband officers and senior officials from each local authority and impressed upon them that they must play a vital role in promoting the smart community initiative and the work of Grow Remote.

A smart community can be described as a community working together supported by local and central government, to bring people and technology together in time to capture and exploit the opportunities that new applications afford and broadband-based services can deliver. Such focused and united community efforts create synergy, which allows individual projects to build upon each other and provide a coherence to Government supports and funding opportunities. Digital is not an end in itself but is an enabler and each community has a different story to tell. In order to develop as a smart community, activities must be community driven and supported by industry and Government