Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

The role of the Government is to formulate regulatory and infrastructure policies to facilitate the provision of high quality telecommunications services by competing private sector service providers. The widespread provision of broadband services continues to be a priority for the Government. In that regard, my Department has undertaken initiatives to address the gaps in broadband coverage. These include providing grant aid under the recently concluded group broadband scheme and investment in metropolitan area networks, MANs.

There are still parts of the country where the private sector will be unable to justify the commercial provision of broadband services. Accordingly, the procurement process for a national broadband scheme is under way. The scheme will provide broadband services for areas currently unserved and ensure all reasonable requests for broadband are met. The first phase of the procurement process — pre-qualification questionnaire — is complete and four candidates pre-qualified to enter the next phase of the process. As my Department indicated on 2 September 2007, the four candidates were, in alphabetical order, BT Communications Ireland Limited consortium, Eircom Limited, Hutchinson 3G Ireland Limited and IFA-Motorola consortium. Following the withdrawal of the IFA-Motorola consortium as a candidate, the remaining three candidates commenced competitive dialogue with my Department and are developing their proposed solutions to meet my Department's requirements for the delivery of broadband to the unserved areas of the country. It is anticipated that a preferred bidder will be selected and appointed in June 2008, with roll-out to commence as soon as possible thereafter, subject to agreement with the chosen candidate.

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