Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I am conscious we are here to debate Committee Stage, with one amendment proposed to the Bill, but as the Vice Chairman said, it is an opportunity to discuss the national development plan and, to a greater extent, infrastructural investment over the coming years. I am glad to hear the Minister outline areas such as public transport, health and housing. The retrofitting of houses will create significant long-term employment and investment in such areas, not to mention offshore renewable which has potential for the creation of jobs through electrifying transport and how we heat our houses. There are good long-term prospects for sustainable and clean jobs, which is really good, and there is a high-multiplier effect from investing money wisely in that. The Minister will recall that when he appeared previously before the committee, he mentioned the European recovery and resilience fund but we did not have an opportunity at that stage to discuss it. That fund will have a very positive impact. He covered much of the infrastructural investment and we are all aware of where we would like that to go.

Digitisation is also a part of that recovery fund and will be very important. We have seen the reliance on the digital communications in the country and where the deficits are. People who have been working from home have struggled in cases where they do not have good communications infrastructure, such as Wi-Fi, broadband and so on. I met representatives of National Broadband Ireland recently and am quite impressed by the fibre-to-door design being rolled out. There is no limit on fibre. The limit is the receivers and transmitters and they are always upgradable. Fibre-to-door is a decades-long investment that will really pay back.

In many urban areas where we thought there was high-speed broadband, excessive loads were experienced during the day when everybody was working from home. There were digital patches and blackspots in urban areas and contention on the line where it was not the single fibre to the door that everybody has. That is an area we need to prioritise. Obviously, rural broadband has been left behind for many years and I fully support accelerating the roll-out of that to everybody, but there is work to be done in many of the urban centres too. I hope part of the recovery and resilience fund will be used for that.