Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

I welcome the increase in funding in this area, which I hope reflects a realisation that we need to front-load money allocated in the national development plan for telecommunication infrastructure. When will the report on the next generation network consultation process be available? Why is the Minister unable to provide additional details on how the budget for next year will be split behind MANs, the national broadband strategy and what he describes as "other information and communications technology programme initiatives"? Surely when he makes a pitch for money from the Department of Finance, he must indicate what he plans to do with it. Why can he not provide more detail?

I assume the Minister is aware that the broadband challenge for Ireland is not only to achieve broadband access for the 15% or 20% of the country that does not have it but also to achieve next generation network capacity, namely, higher speeds. While we try to catch up in terms of first generation broadband connectivity, we are falling further behind in terms of speeds. On average, the advertised download speed here is three megabits, the third worst figure of 35 countries in the OECD. The average advertised speed in France is 44 megabits, in Sweden it is 21 megabits, in Italy it is 13 megabits and in the United Kingdom it is ten megabits. What specific measures does the Minister have in mind to front-load capital investment to try to kickstart the provision of high speed next generation networks by assisting the private sector using the capital available under the national development plan and next year's budget?

See this speech in context