Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I thank the Deputy for giving me the opportunity to place on the record of the House some remarks in respect of this matter. I am also glad to take the opportunity to outline some of the initiatives undertaken to improve the quality of telecommunications infrastructure in regional and rural areas.

As Deputy McHugh will be aware, the electronic communications market in this country is fully liberalised and is regulated by the independent regulator, namely, the Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg. The provision and quality of electronic communications services, including broadband, is a matter for those private sector service providers which are regulated and licensed by ComReg. Broadband services are provided by private service providers over various platforms, including DSL - that is, via telephone lines - fixed wireless, mobile, cable, fibre and satellite. As Minister, I have no role in the operational matters of these private companies.

The role of the State in the provision of broadband infrastructure is generally limited to policy and regulation. In terms of direct service provision, the State can only intervene in areas where the commercial service providers have been unable to offer services on a commercial basis. In this regard, the Government has undertaken a number of initiatives to bring broadband into these areas. In the case of one such intervention, namely, the national broadband scheme, broadband services are available from 3 in all of the 1,028 electoral divisions designated to be covered under the scheme. This includes 200 of the 514 electoral divisions located within the Border area, namely, those in counties Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Louth, Monaghan and Sligo. This represents just under 40% of the total number of electoral divisions in the region. As regards the remaining electoral divisions there, the national broadband scheme was prohibited from providing a service in these areas which were deemed to be already served and where to do so would give rise to an unacceptable level of market distortion.

While broadband and mobile phone coverage is now available across the entire country, I am aware that there continue to be a relatively small number of premises that are not capable of receiving broadband services. This is primarily due to technical and other reasons such as suitability of telephone lines, distance from an enabled exchange and no line of sight. The Government's most recent intervention, namely, the rural broadband scheme, which is currently in the verification phase with licensed service providers, is aimed at making broadband services available to individual unserved premises in rural non-national broadband scheme areas. This could include individual premises located in the non-national broadband scheme electoral divisions in Border counties. A total of 1,148 applications to the rural broadband schemes were received from those counties. Each application corresponds to an individual household or premises.

The advances in the provision of private sector broadband, along with the interventions of Government I have outlined, means that Ireland will reach the European Commission's Digital Agenda for Europe target of having basic broadband available to everybody well in advance of the 2013 deadline. The Government accepts that the widespread availability of high-speed broadband is, as Deputy McHugh has argued, a key requirement in delivering future economic and social development. With basic broadband services available across Ireland, the challenge now is to accelerate the roll-out of high-speed services.

I would like to conclude by mentioning the next generation broadband task force, which I chair. The task force is considering how best to facilitate the roll out of next generation broadband throughout Ireland, which reflects a commitment under the NewERA proposals in the programme for Government. The task force will conclude its deliberations shortly. It is my intention to consider the findings, conclusions and recommendations of its report and to move quickly thereafter to put in place the optimal policy environment for the delivery of high speed broadband, and thereby assist in delivering on the commitment in the programme for Government.

I thank the Deputy for raising this topic and am glad to have had the opportunity to respond.

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