Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I think I might feel more confused than I was before I came to the meeting. There is a lot going on. I will begin with some general questions before asking some more specific ones. I want to get a clear picture. The roll-out of the national fibre broadband plan is based on the 33 MANs. How many of those 33 are in place and how many have yet to be built? Will they use existing infrastructure owned by private phone companies?

How is it working? It is not just the State paying all of these private companies loads of money to do everything. What is the balance? In some ways if these MANs are going to be built it is giving these options to the private companies also because retail services were mentioned. What is the relationship with the private companies and the Government in this realm? We all know the mobile phone companies are fleecing us all to death even for bad quality broadband. At present, how many people in Ireland have no reliable broadband? I do not. How many of the 33 MANs are in place? Is there a commitment to equality of service? I presume if people have fibre broadband that is it and they have good quality, end of story. Is this ipso factoand can it be taken for granted?

If the big plan is to roll out fibre broadband everywhere, what is the big thing with 5G? We have been told that fibre broadband is needed. The 5G is to take care of the external issue only and fibre broadband is to take care of all of the internal domestic requirements in buildings. That is it. How does 5G rely on fibre broadband? It is not connected. It is that one is for indoor and the other is for outdoor. I was a bit confused about that.

NBI is the private company that got the big gig and the onus is on it to do it right. It got the big gig so the Department can dictate to it on certain issues. For instance, when I go onto its home page and put in my eircode it tells me my premises is in the intervention area and my locality and infrastructure will be surveyed. Is it still carrying out surveys? It is very hard to make a plan when not everything is surveyed. I was assured we had moved on from the surveying phase.

The website also lists the nearest broadband connection points and it has two that are 16 km and 14 km away from me. One is the Michael Cusack Centre, on which my father cut the ribbon as he was chair of the group. What is interesting is the website does not list the Wi-Fi hubs. What is that about? There is a Wi-Fi hub 8 km from me. It is part of DigiClare. If the Department is going to pay the company a lot of money for a good website can it please make sure the information is accurate? The website tells me I have to go 16 km to my closest broadband connection point. Of course, the whole thing with broadband connection points and remote Wi-Fi hubs is that there is more jargon that confuses people. Why are the digihubs not listed on the website? They could be much closer to people than broadband connections points. This is important because if we can get broadband we can get people living in rural Ireland again.

Is the company looking at all existing fibre broadband infrastructure? Eir came to the village 5 km from me but nobody outside the village can access it. Even if we promise to dig up the road and put in the cable ourselves we are not allowed to do so. Is NBI looking at all of the existing infrastructure? When we are rolling out fibre broadband can we do it in line with other infrastructure being put in place? We see all over Ireland roads being dug up, then somewhat put back in place and then they are dug up again. There has to be joined up thinking between NBI, the Government, all of the mobile phone companies and other infrastructure through the local authorities. I am glad the Department is meeting the local authorities.

Are the schools being connected through fibre broadband? Is it 5G? How do we find out when a school will get it? What is the roll-out plan? Is there a proper plan in place? I worked with schools and it is great to see them getting it.

With regard to these data centres that will be built all over Ireland, we have heard about the MANs, the feedback and the handover. The MANs were made to sound quite archaic, with the web structure going back in to be handed over to the big guys and out to Europe. The data centres also do this. Will there be an improved quality of service if people just have to go to a data centre in the town near them? Are there any pluses for us getting these data centres? There are plans to have one in Ennis and we are wondering what is going on with it.

When fibre broadband is being rolled out and the data centres approved by the Government are being built, is the Department looking at the carbon footprint of it all? Are there any offsets for this? Every committee has to look at the sustainable development goals. It is 2020 and there is a climate emergency as well as a broadband emergency. I wonder about this because there are big fears. The more knowledge people have, the fewer fears they have about issues such as 5G and data centres being guzzlers.