Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

On the point Deputy Broughan made earlier, is the Minister aware that IBM made a presentation to the Oireachtas joint committee examining the area of broadband? It made the point that in many ways Ireland was an unattractive venture for business and that it could not provide home broadband connections to its staff. That was the specific point IBM wanted to raise before the committee. Is the Minister aware of that?

The Minister referred to the roll-out of school access to broadband. I presume he is counting each school as a connection point and that the 500,000 does not refer to every child, welcome though that access would be. While I accept the Minister's point that it is not simply a numbers game, his solution of providing a competitive market does not include a significant section of our community who cannot afford a €400, €500 or €600 a year connection charge for broadband, regardless of the quality of the connection made. What efforts does the Minister have in mind to bridge that digital divide where significant sections of our community will be unable to access such connections? Other than trying to provide for a competitive market, how does the Minister see that divide being crossed in the roll-out of broadband? How many of the 500,000 people mentioned will be classified among those who may not come within the normal commercial market?

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