Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Cowen is being very severe. Extraordinary developments are under way at present and I have no doubt that the private telecommunications companies will furnish more than 50% of the population with industrial-strength broadband by 2015, which is ahead of the target set by the Commissioner in Europe. I do not see any point in my replicating that or seeking to spend State money where the telecommunications companies are capable of providing the service.

Deputy Cowen will say, entirely fairly, that the service will generally be provided in the more populous areas - that is, in largely urban areas - and he is right about that. It is for that reason that we opted for the three-tier architecture in the plan. It is hard to say, until the mapping exercise is done, what is the size of the bottom tier but the commitment is that those in that tier will have broadband services of not less than 30 Mbps. At the moment, most of those people would not even have 2 Mbps. The design and procurement process will stipulate that the successful bidders to do the job for the State will have to comply with that prospectus.

We will be ahead of the general European digital agenda targets. The expectation for the lifetime of the Government is 2016 and it is within that timeframe that the commitment to provide the second tier with speeds of 40 Mbps or better and the bottom tier with speeds of 30 Mbps or better lies. That will encroach on the NBS areas, although it is not possible to say where exactly until the mapping exercise is done. The previous Government's contract on the NBS runs until August 2014. In any event, the State aids procurement process is painfully slow. It is not something that is designed to penalise Ireland in particular but is the same across all member states. It is a painfully slow process but one we must go through because the net point about the plan is that it acknowledges that State intervention is necessary where the private sector cannot provide.

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