Dáil debates

Tuesday, 26 June 2012

3:00 pm

Photo of Pat RabbittePat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

The report concluded that 50% of the population will, by 2015, have access to as high a speed of broadband as anywhere in Europe, amounting to 70 megabits or more. The report suggests a second tier which could be anywhere between 20% and 35%. The exact size of the second tier is an issue which is much disputed and debated. However, that second tier will have access to speeds of 30 megabits by 2018. The third tier depends for its size on the size of the second tier. It could be that between 15% and 30% of the population will only have basic broadband and this is the issue that must be addressed.

I advise Deputy Naughten not to confuse the report of the next generation broadband task force, comprising senior officials from my Department and the chief executives of the telecommunications companies, with the broadband plan which I will bring to Government before the summer recess as a national broadband plan endorsed by Government. I am not saying it will be identical in all respects and I made this plain at the outset of what was a very valuable partnership process with the industry to identify the bottlenecks and the regulatory, legal and other impediments in the way of better commercial investment in the broadband sector.

There is significant ongoing investment of the order of €500 million per annum and competition is fierce in the more populous areas of the country. The problem, as Deputy Naughten identifies, is that in less populous areas of the country, the prospect is of having to live with basic broadband and this is a market failure. It is accepted, I think, that in areas of market failure, the Government has to intervene and therefore, I can inform Deputy Naughten that it is my intention to have Government intervention. I do not rule out some of the Deputy's suggestions. Interesting, innovative solutions are arising all the time which improve the connectivity. I refer to the considerable success of e-net and its management of the metropolitan area networks. Virtually all the MANs are now lit, which was not the case even a year ago when almost 50% of them remained unlit.

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