Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Does Enterprise Ireland have a policy of setting up these centres or work hubs and, if so, has it discussed the matter with IDA Ireland. On the wider question, has there been any discussion about transferring all of the rural properties that will never be used for classical foreign direct investment to Enterprise Ireland? Most of the successful industries around rural Ireland are actually indigenous, not foreign. Anybody who is big enough to come here is likely to want to be near a city. There is enough talent in this country to create significant employment in rural Ireland. A far more likely market consists of people who might have worked in the foreign direct investment sector in the past or who are just smart and have ideas. There is a lot of employment near where I live that involves very smart local people who got the job done. That is a question.

I am focusing big time on the physical aspect - the national roll-out of broadband and hubs - because my experience is that without any of the soft supports, an endless amount of people are looking for it tomorrow. They were looking for it at the last election as we canvassed the houses one by one because there is a significant cohort of people who work in cities and commute who could reduce their commute to two days per week if they could work from home. They could be at home at mid-term, do all the family-friendly things we want people to do and still keep the work going if they could work from home. This is a significant market for facilitating rural living. It might also solve some urban traffic problems. Driving into Galway on Monday morning was fantastic. I could not believe it. I got there in jig time during rush hour. It was only then that I suddenly realised that it was mid-term, half the parents in the country were off work and all the schools were closed. This is multifaceted but, funnily enough, I do not think we have to do much to educate the people about this. They are saying "Yeah, it's a great idea but I don't have broadband or a facility to access broadband in my village. Will you just give it to us?" We already have an awful lot of businesses and houses in rural Ireland.

Perhaps the rural broadband officer could answer my next question. Have we any idea how many people in areas with broadband now work partially from home? This would allow us to extrapolate how many people in the 600,000 houses that do not have commercial broadband would work from home without any further soft supports because the people already doing it in areas with broadband did so off their own bat. It involves just getting the physical thing there. It is great to have all the supports but we would be encouraging people to use something that does not exist. As I often say, when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, he had no marketing survey but once a good idea took hold, the rest was history. That took a fair while but holding a constituency clinic always fascinated me after somebody invented the mobile phone. When I first came up here, mobile phones were the size of bricks and as scarce as hen's teeth. Once the smaller version came out and they became relatively cheap, everybody was coming in with them. Some of my constituents who would come in would not be technologically savvy. When I asked them for their phone number, they would pull the phone out of their pockets and it would be written on the back of it stuck on with a bit of sellotape but they still used the phone for every purpose for which they wanted it. I find that very few people nowadays come in to see me without a smart phone and they have that because they are using apps. People adopt a technology. They are smart. There is significant interaction involving people in this country. This is small little country. We are a very strange people. The problem we have is the physical availability.