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

We are not exactly downtown Manhattan either. The other interesting point is that the final finalist is Corofin and there is not a town in sight. Corofin is a tiny village. I would say there would not be two players who come from the village.

This committee is a rural one. Towns are part of rural Ireland but they are not rural Ireland. We have to keep remembering that. It is tiny. There is not any geographic problem in servicing all of rural Ireland. They had a dream in Australia that was a little bit ambitious of putting fibre into every house there but in some places in the outback it might be necessary to go 10, 20 or 30 miles to find a house. I know of nowhere in Ireland that is impossible to service with water or electricity. We have done it for the electricity. One thing that does disturb me is that the State seems to have just grasped that fibre is like electricity. It is just a case of sticking in and doing it without having to depend on private people or ingenious LEADER companies or whatever to create a basic resource. Thanks be to God we did not do that with electricity. Early in our history we decided that every house was to get electricity and to just do it, get it done, and that was it. That is my view on this whole fibre thing, just get it done.