Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the presentation. In February, I had never heard of Zoom. There has been a complete change in milieu and our way of doing work as a result of Covid. As Deputy Kerrane said, hopefully it is one of the positives we will take out of the pandemic and we will be able to retain some of those gains as we move forward.

In the first instance, I echo what Deputy Ó Cuív said about the possibility for decentralisation. For that to happen, we should not only build new broadband points but we should allow flexibility in places where there is existing capacity to allow for more than one Department to be represented in a building. These are not questions but comments. Another idea we discussed at the coiste Gaeilge is using moil dhigiteachta or digital hubs and remote working to help us achieve the recruitment figures in the Irish language that we are hoping to do on foot of the Bille teanga that is coming through.

Dr. Stjohn O'Connor referred to the SSID. Are the moil dhigiteachta designed to the same standard? Do they have that separate channel if we decide to leverage that network in order to have Government work happen within those communities?

I am playing the devil's advocate in putting my next question. In the interests of maintaining work-life balance, people want to work closer to home but they like to have a division between home and work life and they also like to go out to work so that they can come home from work. Are we confident that we are not building a structure that is already redundant?

As more and more people get high-quality broadband into their homes, will they choose to go to a remote working hub or, instead, to build an office at home?

I was very interested to hear Dr. O'Connor's remarks on categorisation and beginning to look at how the remote working hubs are being used. What does the business plan look like after installation? Will people have to pay for hot desking? Is a plan being uniformly being rolled out or is it being done very much on a hub-by-hub basis? I worry that the latter approach would lead to failure. We should be building towards a situation whereby we know hubs will be able to pay for their upkeep, including heating and other services that are going in there. Is there any information on what the business plan looks like after launch?