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

I want to get to the nub of this issue. Electricity was initially generated on the islands, as Mr. Ó hÓbáin knows, but it was subsequently considered better to bring in cables. I am not sure about Inishturk but Tory Island and all the rest are connected by subsea cable because it is better than other options. Fibre is better than any radio system. The question then, and it is a valid question, is if there is a cost difference between fibre and radio signal and if the Department of Rural and Community Development is willing to pay the difference, will there be a facility for NBI to go with the proper model and not short-change the islands by putting in something that is not as good as fibre? If the alternatives were as good as fibre, they would be installed all over the place. We might not have time to go into the detail of this today but the conversation needs to happen. There is no reason that the Department, in order to get the best solution, should not fund that extra cost, if there is such a cost, over what might be acceptable to the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications but would not be optimal. As I said, it can be done in a cost-efficient way. Many of the islands have electric cables but cannot export electricity, whereas they would have opportunities in the renewables field if much more resilient ESB cables went in at the same time and so on. Doing the undersea work is not that expensive. I oversaw the installation of undersea cables on a number of lightly populated islands. It is quite quick and cheap to do if there is a sandy bottom.