Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the questions. There are 150 commitments in this programme but it is a five-year plan. In a couple of weeks, I will outline the commitments for this year. Obviously, as the Chairman said, I am happy to go through those with the committee at a later stage. We will not be able to do it all in one year. We will develop a work programme. However, I did not want to set it in stone because we may need to change some of these things and there will be emerging issues that we will want to include in the plan. For example, if we had set the programme in 2019, we would certainly have had to change a considerable amount of it given what has happened and the positivity around remote working, etc.

The roll-out of the broadband is a priority for the Government. The good news is we have boots on the ground and we hope to have 60,000 premises passed by the end of this year. In addition, we have found that the private providers are starting to roll out broadband as well. In fact, in my own home, I was able to pick up one of the private operators. I had been working off 2 Mbps but now have 30 Mbps. The change it makes is unbelievable. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, has met with National Broadband Ireland and we are looking at how we can reduce the term of this plan from seven years to five years. At the current roll-out rate, more than 90% of houses will be covered by the end of the plan but it is a question of how we bring the remaining more remote properties into the five-year space and we are working hard to do that. An interesting figure somebody told me is that the amount of cable it would take to connect every house and county in this country would go round the globe almost four times. That gives the committee an indication of the mammoth task and the physical project required to bring all those connections to the various houses.

Enhancing public services is very much part of it. We need to look at the digitisation and how we do things differently. I can see there being hubs. We can use places, such as community halls or maybe buildings that are repurposed, for such activities as e-learning and e-health, and we can roll out our public services, maybe through some of these centres we are developing.

Deputy Kerrane mentioned the banks, in particular. I certainly agree with her. Bank closures in rural areas is a blow to us. There is no doubt about that. The problem is that the vast majority of people are banking online. We are all using our phones to make payments and whatever. It is a positive development that the post offices are now able to provide some of those services. They will transfer from Bank of Ireland to the post office and that will help the post office network.

My background is in the credit union sector and I very much want to see our credit unions being supported to develop and roll out more services. A group of credit unions has come together and has been able to work with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment in rolling out the Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, SBCI, loans. That is important. We need to see more of that and we need to support our credit unions to do that because many of them have good, iconic buildings in the centres of towns. They are very modern and new buildings so they are there to stay.

Going back to Bank of Ireland, there are opportunities whereby the State could look to acquire buildings, possibly through our local authorities, and convert them into remote working hubs or multipurpose spaces for community facilities. I have spoken directly to Bank of Ireland and to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe. That is important and we should try to progress that.

We have set up a committee to look at the post offices and the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, is chairing that committee. It is about bringing in the stakeholders. I met the Irish Postmasters Union recently and it has ideas around converting post offices into spaces with remote working or high-speed broadband connections, where the postmasters could provide that bit of help. For example, if a farmer did not have high-speed broadband he or she could come in and the postmaster could help him or her to fill out forms or do some work there. That is an idea that I discussed with them. I said that if they have good ideas they should come back to me and I am happy to work with them.

Regarding local authorities, we have a number of schemes, including the town and village renewal scheme, and then there is the town centre first interdepartmental group, chaired by the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke. I want to see ways of revitalising the towns and getting people back to living in them but we are going to have to incentivise them. That is the reality here.

The Deputy asked about a one-stop shop. That is a good idea and we are certainly looking into having a one-stop shop because there is a plethora of different things that people can apply for. I said one day that one would need Google Maps to find them all. It is about having that one space or platform. If we can set up a platform to find all the networking hubs across the country we can certainly put a one-stop shop database in place for people to access and apply for those services.

We have increased the number of places on Tús and CE schemes. That was announced as part of the July stimulus package but as members know, Covid and the restrictions that were in place meant we were not able to roll that out like we thought we would. It is there and the commitment is there to increase the places on all those schemes by approximately 50%.

As regards the local employment services, I absolutely recognise the fantastic work that is carried out by our local employment service providers across the country. I can speak first-hand about those in my own county of Monaghan and I am sure Deputy Kerrane could do the same for her county of Roscommon. There is a fantastic local employment service in Monaghan, led by Francis McCarron. He does fantastic work with his team in helping people with career guidance, CV and interview preparation and upskilling and training supports. I use the service regularly for constituents who want that support. I take this opportunity to assure the committee and put on the record that I recognise the great work carried out by many of our local employment providers. However, the reality is that, as Minister, I have to follow the legal advice I am given. To do otherwise would be a dereliction of my duties. The clear legal advice I have been given is that the Department is in breach of EU procurement rules and that we need to have a competitive procurement process for these contracts. In addition, the Comptroller and Auditor General found in his 2019 report that the Department was not in adherence to public procurement policy. I do not want anybody to be in any doubt. This is very serious. When the legal advice and the Comptroller and Auditor General are saying that, it is not something that can be ignored.

Regarding what we are doing at the minute, we will be launching a phase 1 procurement process to expand the local employment services into four regions where there are currently no services at all. Given the scale of the challenge facing us all in getting people back to work post Covid, which we need to do, we want to roll these services out where there is nothing at the minute. There are no losers in this phase. It would provide a new service in areas where there is currently no local employment service. As we emerge from Covid we are going to need those additional services to help people get back to work. I cannot go into detail at this stage regarding the request for tender but I can say that it has been designed to focus mainly on the quality of the service offering, as well as the experience and track record of the tenderers in delivering a range of supports and services for those furthest from the labour market. My message today is to work with us here. What I want to do at the end of the day is make sure the people who want a job and want to get employment get all the support they can get. We can help them realise their potential and help them get that job. I just wanted to give an update on that. I thank Deputy Kerrane for raising all those issues with me.