Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach. I have a question that I am not sure if Mr. Spratt is necessarily going to be able to answer but, in fairness, he brought the issue up. It relates to the national broadband plan. We all understand the importance of it, particularly in the context of Covid-19, etc. I met National Broadband Ireland, NBI, within the last fortnight and I raised this issue as part of a Topical Issue debate in the Dáil. I asked NBI to provide me with a note. It said that there are specific issues, some of which relate to local government, which need to be dealt with in order to facilitate an acceleration. I gave a copy of this note not only to the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications but to the Tánaiste who said he was going to be having a meeting with NBI in the near future.

These are issues that need to be dealt with as quickly as possible and I restate them here. Some of them are very simple. There was an issue in respect of Safe Pass but I believe that has now been dealt with. This was holding up contractors from abroad from coming in. There may be a wider issue in that we are taking contractors from abroad. I was led to believe that they were going through quarantine. If, however, there is a skill set shortage, that is also something that we need to look at in our planning for the future.

Like every other part of society, there was an issue where teams were held up due to Covid-19. This slowdown means they need some form of a moratorium as regards tree or hedgerow trimming. There may be options within the Wildlife (Amendment) Act which will allow for this.

NBI needs clarity on this but one of the big issues it had was that it needed a faster roll-out of the section 254 guidelines on the erection of poles, which is something that must be issued to all local authorities and which allows for a speedy planning process.

On road opening licences, NBI said it has difficulties in that it may have an initial plan and everything has been allowed for, but that a route may need to be changed. Changing a route could mean a new permission needs to be applied for which can take anything from days up to eight weeks. That is an issue both with local authorities and with Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII. What it is really talking about is a permitting or licensing system that will allow for this to happen in real time and that will allow NBI to sign off with the local authority or TII towards the end of the process.

We are dealing with something people and the Minister are talking about as being as important as rural electrification, so anything that needs to be done has to be done. We are told that all areas of Government are willing to put their shoulders to the wheel to deliver on this, so we need to ensure it happens. All I need to know is that this is being dealt with and that there will be some sort of streamlined process to deal with it. This is probably not the place to deal with it and nor is the Dáil but we have the tools. I do not know what sort an answer Mr. Spratt can give me on this issue but I need it to be moved on.