Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)

Since 1997 people on the other side of the House have spoken of the knowledge economy and the information superhighway. For some 11 years the Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, has been very proactive in his jargon and rhetoric in this regard. In 1999 the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Mary Harney, launched a task force report in Donegal on moving towards a service-based economy, which noted that manufacturing is not the way forward. However, such sentiments must be supported by critical infrastructure like broadband. It has been mentioned in every report of the past ten years and I believe this is empty rhetoric.

In 2002 my colleague, Deputy Coveney, became our chief spokesperson on communications and he was not full of empty rhetoric. He put forward policies and guidelines on what should be done. We have missed opportunities to work on broadband in tandem with the construction sector and the private sector, especially regarding roads, and we should have taken every chance to lay down fibre optic cables to increase bandwidth.

We still have opportunities and we still have time to address this issue. If the Minister for Finance, Deputy Brian Cowen, is serious in his rhetoric on front-loading infrastructure and not reducing capital spending he must apply these sentiments to broadband. We must work closely with Ofcom in Northern Ireland and ComReg and I welcome the fact that BT may soon penetrate this market and create more competition in this part of the island. The same goes for Eircom in Northern Ireland. That is what is needed. We have signed up to the Belfast Agreement. Enshrined in that Agreement is a responsibility to have communications across the Border.

My colleague, Deputy Seymour Crawford, referred to the absence of broadband infrastructure in Cavan and Monaghan. The same applies in my own County Donegal. We have missed opportunities but there is still time to do something about it.

People in the industry use the jargon, "virtual assistant". I googled it today and got 2.9 million examples of the virtual assistant programmes. This is where it is at. Countries such as Slovenia and Slovakia, that have recently become members of the EU, are at the races when it comes to broadband, we still have to pull up our socks in this game in places such as Meenletterbale in north east Inishowen, Carrowmenagh and Churchhill where people wish to work and live at home within the realm of best work-life balances, thus taking heavy traffic off the road. This would lead to better work practices. Opportunities have been missed during the past 11 years but we have to be serious and fast forward to create a critical infrastructure to provide critical mass.

See this speech in context