Ms Margrethe Vestager:

I thank Deputy Munster for raising this because we have made exactly the same observation in that there is a social toll here. For some kids, who have good connectivity, the correct gadgets, and whose parents can help out, the pandemic has been one thing. However, for kids with very poor connectivity and whose parents have not been able to help out, this may have been a year that was more or less wasted. In a child's life, a year of schooling counts for something.

There are two things from this. Obviously, we have varying subcompetence when it comes to education, yet we have made a digital education action plan to see what we have learned in this. The second thing is to focus on connectivity. A minimum of 20% of the recovery and resilience facility is for digital technologies, and much of that goes to connections, in particular, where there is no business case. If a private business does not roll out services because it does not believe there is a business case, a state can come in and make sure there is sufficient support for the roll-out to happen. At the same time, it should work on other forms of technology so that the very remote areas can also be connected with broadband or fibre and, if not, via satellite.

Deputy Munster raised the point that of families living door to door in an urban environment, some have the resources to connect and others do not. That is an important point for the local authorities. In my letter box, when I came home the other day, there was an invitation to an open house youth centre, where young people were invited to come and write their CVs and learn how to deal with online job searches. It is an important thing for local authorities to provide that because they are well placed, they know the families involved, and they are probably trusted to do something rather than someone sitting thousands of kilometres away.