Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to finish my contribution. I apologise again for being late and I must go to another meeting now. I say genuinely as a politician that we get representation requests around intervention areas and where we are at with broadband. I thank Adam Ledwith and Damien Dineen of the NBI, with whom I have engaged. I wish other organisations would be as welcoming to our representations. We might not get the answers we would like but they are available, accessible and come back to us in a prompt and timely way, and I thank them for that.

Our guests need to start lighting a fire under themselves in terms of selling their message. The Road Safety Authority does a great job with its advertising campaigns. The NBI needs to tell local authority members and inform the public through social media and public advertising about the work it is doing and the challenges it is undertaking and that must overcome. Part of what we do in the committee is important but this is a huge project for our country. We put out ads for the national development plan, NDP, and for Covid. I ask that the NBI do the same. It may already but it is important we move away from older methods. The day we met our guests, they had a very lovely glossy booklet, which was great. However, people are on the iPhone, the radio and television now. the NBI needs to sell that message. This is a transformative project that is going to take time. I am aware the NBI is behind and we need to bring people back in again on the totality of the picture, but I am positively enthused, notwithstanding the challenges. Maybe I am naive and in my own world-----