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

I launched the first phase of the Government's national digital strategy in July this year. The aim of the strategy is to significantly increase the levels of digital adoption in Ireland. It sets out key objectives across three different strands, namely, trading online and entrepreneurship; citizen engagement, and education and e-learning.

My Department has worked closely with stakeholders to develop the administrative arrangements for the trading online voucher scheme. This will commence with a two phase pilot project, the first phase of which gets under way this week with a call for applications in Dublin through the Dublin City Enterprise Board. A second phase of the pilot will be progressed in early 2014 and will be followed by a national roll-out with the objective of getting 2,000 small and micro-businesses trading online within 24 months.

The strategy also aims to encourage digital entrepreneurship. Earlier this year I renewed the contract with the National Digital Research Centre to provide ongoing support for the translation of digital research into commercial propositions. Results from NDRC's work to date have been promising with follow on private sector investment being secured for a number of the projects which it is supporting. My Department also continues to support the Digital Hub Development Agency. There are currently 72 digital companies operating from the Digital Hub, employing approximately 880 people.

Strand two of the strategy focuses on citizen engagement. Our target is to cut the number of people not using the Internet in half by the end of 2016. This will entail awareness raising, a focus on skills development and basic training. With €1.4 million funding support from my Department, and in partnership with stakeholders, I launched a new national digital literacy training programme earlier this year. The BenefIT 4 programme has already provided training for almost 3,000 people and is operating in over 550 locations nationwide. My Department has also developed an online mapping resource to make it easier to find the nearest BenefIT training location.

The third strand of the strategy relates to e-learning.

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A series of technology "Switch On" workshops will be held in schools to showcase the best use of technology in the classroom. This programme builds on the 100 Mbps to second level schools project in which my Department and the Department of Education and Skills are investing in high speed symmetrical broadband capacity for every second level school in the country. The second phase of the schools broadband programme is currently being implemented and I expect that all schools will be connected by the end of next year. We are already learning from the very positive experiences in schools that already have 100 Mbps connectivity and will use the "Switch On" workshops to share these experiences with other schools. We have also asked the ESRI to undertake research on educational outcomes as a consequence of using high speed connectivity in the classroom.

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