Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their interesting presentation. I wish to raise a couple of matters. The first is the chapters, how they are set up and what mechanism a community project or group goes through to engage with them. I am from south Leitrim. Carrick-on-Shannon has a good broadband service and is the place where everything is happening, but there is very little outside that. That is one of the difficulties. I live in a rural parish where there is a pub and a shop. There used to be a post office but it is not there anymore. We will not discuss that today. We have a football pitch. The school was a three-teacher school but unless we attract another 16 children by next September, it will become a two-teacher school. Once it becomes a two-teacher school, it will be on the way out. In many rural parishes around the country there is no town. There is a wire running on top of the poles from Mohill to Aghavas that is supposedly the broadband wire. It has been there for three years but there is no broadband. It is the same in many places. I rejoice in what the witnesses are telling us, but we have heard so much of this for so long that many rural communities have become disheartened and have given up. They have tried so hard but they find it very difficult.

I would like to have details on how these chapters can work, which businesses could be involved and how people can live at home in a rural area and go to the small village or town nearby and work from there. If that can happen and there is a market for that and if something real can be done to change things around, that is wonderful. However, we are hesitant in believing it because we have heard so many promises in the past.

The other issue is how to make this happen. Communities have come together and have worked hard for a long time to try to make things happen, but it has generally ended up that these little development organisations have just become social clubs. There is little at the end of it. That has to change. If the witnesses are saying there is an opportunity here in that regard, we must first get these broadband wires running along the top of the poles live and working. We need to have not just one or two major towns in each county having good broadband but to get broadband everywhere. I do not expect it to go down every boreen. People in rural Ireland are not stupid. They understand that. However, there must be a decent broadband provision in most places. If there is an opportunity for remote working for people living at home through many of the multinational companies or reasonably well established companies, as was mentioned by Ms Keogh, how is that accessed? What is the A, B and C for doing this? We must see the framework and the proof of concept. We are sick of concepts and reports on how things could be done because when it comes to it, nothing happens. That is the reality for many people living in rural areas where there is a three-teacher school being reduced to a two-teacher school. They want to change that.