Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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-----besides the State. Only the body politic and the State care about them. No one in the market does. I have listened to people arguing about this company and that company, but companies are not going to make profits going up boreens, up hills or down dales unless we heavily subsidise them. That is what the taxpayer is about to do to the tune of 60% more than it was meant to cost us in 2016. When this was rolled out last year, I told the Minister at a committee meeting that it would be brilliant and work well if we followed the model set by Ardnacrusha and the electrification of Ireland. That would have been in the interests of the State and people and we would have controlled the taxpayers' money. Under the current model, though, and comparing broadband to electrification, half the country will be left in the dark - the Minister used the analogy of roads, but I will use the analogy of light - because there is not enough profit to be made by these companies. They will not be interested. Hence the reluctance of the Minister, his officials and everyone else to give a deadline. They cannot predict what the market will do. It is a bag of chaos and does not deliver public services.

My final point goes to the heart of the matter. It is ironic that Fianna Fáil challenges the Minister in the way it does when it was the party that privatised Telecom Éireann. As Mr. Fintan O'Toole said, that company was passed around like a joint at a student party. It was kicked around the marketplace, leaving it in its current position. We owned Telecom Éireann and got rid of it. Our State is now trying to do something important, since everyone must get access to broadband in order that people can work, do business, learn and communicate. However, we are relying on a chaotic market to deliver it as opposed to what we did in the 1950s and 1960s when we delivered electricity ourselves. Fianna Fáil has significant responsibility for this situation. It privatised a State-owned company that was doing well. We might have had a chance of getting ESB, which is part-owned by the State, to do something. Tragically, it has pulled out as well.

Of all public private partnerships, PPPs, this must be the worst. At least previous PPPs allowed the State to own the assets eventually, be it after 25 or 30 years. We will never own this asset, having pumped in millions of euro, including 60% more this year and God knows how much more next year. We will not know, and the Minister cannot give a deadline because he cannot predict what the market will do. This goes to the root of the problem. You have made a bags of it, not because you are Deputy Naughten, Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, but because the whole nine yards of you believe in the neoliberal model, which does not work for delivering this kind of service.