Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

-----in answer to this question, it means "before St. Patrick's Day". It is not two years, three years or anything like that. We will bless the report with the shamrock before St. Patrick's Day.

The work of the task force, as is made very clear, is technology neutral. The merit of it is that it is a unique partnership between Government and the chief executives of the leading operators here. What we are trying to do is to design a road map for the future to find out where the weaknesses are and to prepare for next generation access. I explained there are four different working groups looking at different aspects. The Deputy has a later question concerning spectrum auctioning. Spectrum policy is one of the issues under consideration and another is the remarkable variations that apply in different local authorities in terms of facilitating investment in their own county. These four separate work groups are involved in detailed, painstaking work that comes back to the task force itself.

While I would not like to tell the Deputy that the next meeting of the task force will be the last meeting, I think it will be the last meeting but one and that we will have the report completed by St. Patrick's Day. I hope it will identify the strengths, weaknesses and deficits, and where investment has to be made for the next generation broadband.

See this speech in context