Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 14 February 2019

Public Accounts Committee

Regional Internet Service Providers Association

9:00 am

Mr. Marcus Matthews:

It is in or around that. As part of that Reaching 100 programme in its procurement process or evaluation process for that initiative, Scotland realised it would not be economically viable to bring fibre to all those homes. Therefore before even launching that programme, it had already begun work on a consumer subvention programme, similar to what the respected Irish economist, Colm McCarthy, noted in his 2015 report and provided as part of the submission. The NBP probably should have looked at that. The intervention that Scotland is looking at is to give grant vouchers to the consumers in a technology agnostic way, so they can decide themselves whether it is going to be fixed wireless or fibre. They work with the ISPs to figure out what is viable.

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