Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Like Deputy Dooley, my concern is that the Taoiseach has been misinformed. When I asked him about this in the Dáil, he stated that one has to be careful not to disadvantage one part of the country versus another. The truth is that we are giving an advantage to one-off housing. This is one of the concerns of the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. We have another 60,000 houses which we put on the books in this project and it could cost up to €5,000 per house in order to put in ducting. Those houses may not even be along the road. The ESB has a very interesting map which shows that when Eir has dealt with most of the road-based stuff, we will be left with the houses beyond the road. If anything, what we are doing is giving a very good deal to rural Ireland. Let us be very honest and clear about the fact that this is a gold-plated standard for the most rural of houses, particularly when one considers that my constituents do not get any €5,000 grants and do not have fibre to their homes in most-----.