Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

My concern is that we will go to a great deal of trouble to put together a national audit of broadband ducting infrastructure — and other forms of infrastructure that can be used for broadband roll-out, such as fibre-optic cable run along railway tracks or ESB cabling — but that we will not undertake an audit of privately owned infrastructure that is available for ducting. The audit of publicly owned infrastructure is only half the job. We cannot have an intelligent strategic approach which is of maximum benefit to the industry if we do not know what ducting is available in private ownership, for example, in the Eircom, NTL and Chorus networks. We need to know all infrastructure available in Ireland, in wireless form as well as physical ducting or fibres. In this way the Minister can, through regulation, ensure we open up access to all that infrastructure to facilitate competition. Is it the Minister's intention to do that quickly, or is it his intention to consider only publicly owned infrastructure?

Is it the Minister's ambition to require open access to privately owned as well as publicly owned infrastructure, as has been done, for example, in France? This would have significant benefits in terms of promoting competition and allowing new entrants into the market by offering them access to infrastructure they would not otherwise have been able to access.

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