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

Or with a bed, but it would be a toss-up which could be done better without. On behalf of rural people, I must re-emphasise that the quicker the national broadband roll-out, the better.

It would be useful if we could very quickly get a fix on the different usage of a broadband connection point, BCP, versus a hub in an area where there is already broadband fibre to the home, or by the part of the area where the broadband fibre is to the home. How do they use the hub as compared to those people who do not have the broadband at home? We need to get that fixed. The future is going to be the hub where everybody has fibre to the home.

I often believe there is a misconception, not by the Department or anyone here, but by some people and certainly commentators who seem to have an idea that rural Ireland has no bite. The Chairman will be able to confirm that when the manual exchanges were abolished in the 1980s they were replaced by small exchanges. These were brown boxes one would see around the countryside in all sorts of areas and every little village had one. It is quite some time since Eir rolled out fibre into each one of those boxes. Eir started with the box and worked out for a mile or two in each direction but suddenly stopped. Many of us could never figure that out. There is one place close to me where it went out a road and stopped short of what is for our area a good cluster of houses. Nobody could figure it out. One would think that Eir might say, "Having gone this far we will pick up these houses", but it did not. I understand that it was due to some logarithm it had. There is no area, village or street in the country that has one of these brown boxes that does not have fibre in it. Everywhere, from County Dublin outwards, all over rural Ireland the fibre is going down and there are two communities: one with fibre and one without fibre. It is not just a west coast problem. This is the midlands, the east coast, or three miles from a city. We need to encourage the national broadband company to get on and get the job done. I am disappointed.

I now turn to the technicalities of it. It is my understanding that they are hanging the fibre on the existing telegraph poles, and that one of the big jobs Eir had to do in rolling out its fibre was to upgrade the poles. Where they are being upgraded there should be no problem in hanging another fibre wire and actually starting that part of the work. I understand they are going back to base with the wires but in hanging the fibre one does not have to do the whole thing of checking the poles and renewing them because that would already have been done by Eir. One could start having to check those and the last pole out. As an aside, it is my understanding that when the fibre is rolled out the copper wires become redundant. The copper is very heavy and tends to be the cause of blown down poles. There was also a problem that under some ComReg regulation they were not allowed to remove the copper even when it was redundant. We need to clarify that issue because it causes issues with the wind blowing down poles. The fibre is so light that this is not an issue.

I accept the socialisation and the working in groups, but even those people are going to work from home. I have made that point. I am still not happy or reassured that there is a will and that it is really happening to put in mobile signals. While there are places where there are no mobile signals full stop, for example, inside a rock, I still do not see the will or the way to make sure that infrastructure is put into these areas. I cannot see from a technical point of view that it is any more difficult. While more small masts are needed it would be no more difficult to find sites than it is to find all the sites that must be found in the rest of the country.