Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

The cross-departmental team on infrastructure is the ideal place to examine the challenges we face on broadband connectivity because it involves so many Departments. On the Taoiseach's answer on broadband, for clarity purposes, international connectivity for Ireland was dramatically enhanced by the Global Crossing project, and that was welcome. However it is still far cheaper to send data from Amsterdam to New York than from Dublin to New York. We should not sit back and pretend the global crossing project back in 1999 solved all our problems. We need further investment in that and there are opportunities at which the Government should look.

The national broadband scheme will have to deal with up to 15% of the country rather than 10%. There is much scepticism on whether it will be viable in competition law for some parts of the country where it needs rolling out as well as the issues the Taoiseach has identified. The key issue for the cross-Departmental committee is to try to put a plan in place that will allow the Government to subsidise the private sector to roll out next-generation broadband with the speeds required without interfering with natural competition.

In the policy document we launched two weeks ago we tried to indicate how that can be done. It is primarily about helping to fund open-access ducting to carry fibre optic cable that will upgrade a primarily copper infrastructure from people's houses to the kerb side to the exchange, which is the key section of infrastructure that needs to be upgraded. It does not make financial sense for many of the companies involved, predominantly Eircom, to do that because of the numbers of houses and businesses involved, which is why the State needs to subsidise that key piece of infrastructure between the kerb side and the exchange in particular. I ask the Taoiseach and the cross-departmental committee to examine our suggestions, which have been made in a non-political way as a proactive attempt to deal with the issue rather than setting up more fora and consultations processes, which is what the Minister continues to do on broadband.

See this speech in context