Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Before speaking on the legislation, I commend the staff from Eircom and the ESB networks who were out right throughout the Christmas period, along with local authority and emergency staff. They did a tremendous job during the severe weather we experienced over Christmas.

The piece of legislation before us today is not the most important piece of legislation we will deal with this year but is probably the most important piece of legislation that will be dealt with by the Parliament in this decade. The significance of the legislation cannot be underestimated. It is not just because it will be responsible for extending the fibre network to an extra 500,000 homes in Ireland or because it provides for the potential of "wireless" fibre networks in order to provide decent broadband to people who do not live in those 500,000 houses. There is potential for broadband connectivity within electricity cables, and getting the ESB involved will help drive forward that idea. With that process, we would not need to install extra physical infrastructure, and we could bring broadband to every home in Ireland that is connected to the electricity network.

We cannot underestimate the importance of broadband. Internet connectivity today is as important for employment and the needs of Irish society as electricity was 60 years ago. There is a demand for greater bandwidth and speed, which is the main issue. Everybody who spoke earlier mentioned rural broadband, which faces problems with speed. I have been trying to formulate an analogy to help explain to people what we are talking about in that respect. We can imagine trying to travel from any part of rural Ireland to Dublin without being able to use the motorway or the national road network. That means we would have to drive a rigid-body truck with a trailer, for example, on icy roads. That is what the broadband service in many parts of rural Ireland is like. If fibre networks were brought to the door, however, instead of driving the rigid-body truck on an icy back road, it would be like driving a luxury car with cruise control on a 36-lane motorway with nobody else on the road. That example brings home to people what we are talking about and the potential of the provisions being debated in the House today.

People can probably survive with current speeds if they are surfing the Internet or sending e-mails. Contention - or in plain English, congestion on the line to Dublin - continues to be a problem. Current broadband speeds are grossly inadequate if people are using Skype, submitting online documentation such as that required for the single farm payment application or using the Internet as a study tool. I acknowledge the efforts of the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, in bringing industrial-strength broadband to every secondary school in Ireland. He is to be commended because he started on the west coast and worked backwards to Dublin; every initiative up to now has always gone the other way. We now need to ensure that when those students leave school and go home they can have decent broadband speeds to do tutorials or submit homework online.

The current Government target of ensuring every rural home in Ireland has a broadband connection of at least 30 Mb per second will be difficult to achieve, and we must redouble our efforts in that regard. The target set out by the ESB on foot of the passage of this legislation will bring super-fast broadband to those currently within the catchment of the fixed-line broadband network. People should not think that we are currently discussing will resolve the problem for rural broadband. It will not do so, as the objective is to bring fibre broadband to an extra 500,000 homes in Ireland, meaning that rural communities are still excluded.

Work to address the issue of rural broadband connectivity must continue by focusing not just on getting the connection working but on issues of contention as well. Technologies exist that provide broadband to people, but the difficulty is that although speed is achievable, it may only be after midnight because of congestion. That is not much good if one is trying to operate a business from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. Satellite technology can address some of the problem, and its use is a major step forward. There are some very good operators that can deliver up to 20 Mbps, but they do not provide a long-term solution.

Wireless technologies in conjunction with a fibre network can address the immediate problem and provide 30 Mbps. This is known as wireless fibre. The ESB already has a network of masts and sites around the country that could be used if fibre lines are connected to the sites. Wireless fibre could be produced by these networks. As an incentive, the Minister should hand over the semi-State broadband network to the new operator.

That would act as an incentive to roll out fibre to the transmission sites in order that wireless fibre could be available throughout the country. Much of it is unlit.

Let me give an example of the problem we face. Monksland, the second biggest town in my county, is located at the edge of Athlone which has an eircom fibre network with an excellent service. It has WiMax, 4G and UPC services and a number of fibre backbones passing through it, including the BT fibre backbone. The State fibre network is also coming into the town, yet the people of Monksland do not have a basic broadband service. Within a few hundred yards of that community, there are the Irish Rail and Bord Gáis fibre networks, the MAN fibre network and the ESB transmission network that has been providing an Internet service up to now. Much of this is unlit. Since there is no connectivity between the networks of the various semi-State companies, they are all competing against each other, instead of sweating the asset in the interests of the State and consumers. I urge the Minister to intervene in this regard. This initiative would ensure people could use a number of devices in their homes, be it to watch television online, operate an iPad or computer, or play a video game. It would provide a reliable service. Probably the three main beneficiaries are businesses, younger people and older people. Previous speakers have spoken about business. Whether one is working in Tokyo or Tulsk, County Roscommon, one could be on an equal footing, with needed supports provided for rural businesses and enterprises.

One area of rural enterprise is agriculture, in respect of which broadband connectivity and penetration is only at about 53%. Farmers could make applications online if they had access to broadband. With the Minister's proposals for the new GLAS scheme, farmers will have to gain access to online tutorials, but they will not be able to do so if they do not have broadband. The reality is that most of the people who will apply to join the scheme are in the more disadvantaged parts of the country where there is no broadband access. I hope the Minister can redouble efforts to ensure that, in tandem with the introduction of the GLAS scheme, people will be given access to the relevant tools to allow them to avail of the online tutorials.

As I stated, the Minister has brought industrial strength broadband to schools, but it will not reach its full capacity unless it is available in homes for pupils. Remote access for children outside school would ensure they could connect to the school server and gain access to texts and library resources. If children were sick and absent from school, they could learn what was covered in their school on the day in question. They could still do their homework and this would prevent many students from having to go for grinds. They would be available to avail of grinds online. A child's family’s financial resources will be irrelevant if children can access resources online, thus putting them on an equal footing with every other pupil in the country.

In smaller secondary schools pupils who are not taking chemistry or agricultural science could actually take their course online from home or sit the leaving certificate examination in the same way as anyone else. The same applies to adult education that requires access to online courses.

The initiative has the most significant potential in addressing the issue of rural isolation and the needs of the elderly. In the next few years one in four will be over 65 years. That is a significant cohort. Owing to economic circumstances, many of them will be living alone and they will not have the family supports or networks they require. In my constituency one third of all pensioners living in County Leitrim are on their own. In County Roscommon the figure is 31%; in County Mayo, 30% and in County Cavan, 30%. The figure for Galway is 27%, while those for counties Westmeath and Offaly are just slightly lower. Some 60%, or almosts two thirds, of older people believe technology has left them behind. Technology would provide them with much greater potential than anything else in society. If they could be provided with fibre broadband of a sufficient speed, we could ensure they could be stimulated educationally and kept more active. Furthermore, tele-care and health care services could be provided. High blood pressure, for example, could be monitored on an ongoing basis.

There is a very good initiative in Wales whereby an older person can actually speak to a health profession in the local hospital through a video link on his or her television if he or she is concerned about his or her blood pressure reading or not having taken his or her medication. The same applies in the case of diabetes in that a blood sample can be put on a reader connected to an iPhone and the results fed back to the local medical centre, the staff of which can say the patient needs to increase his or her insulin intake because of a particularly high blood sugar level, for example. There is great potential to develop tele-health services by putting sensors in homes and linking them with remote servers connected to hubs where medical professionals can monitor large numbers of people in rural areas. This would reduce rural isolation and significantly reduce the cost to the health sector. One would not have to send an ambulance to bring a very sick patient to an accident and emergency unit if the illness could be diagnosed and treated much earlier. This might mean that the local public health nurse would have to call out to the individual, but it would make it less likely that he or she would have to go to the general practitioner or hospital. We could have a genuinely connected society, but to achieve this we need to go one step further than is envisaged in this proposal.

Connecting 500,000 houses is very welcome, but there is great potential to go further with wireless fibre which should be brought to rural homes in order that residents may, for the first time, be given a level playing pitch. People had to fight hard to receive a public water supply. They received an electricity supply 60 years ago and it turned society around in rural areas. Broadband could do the same, but the Minister needs to ensure this. He could be the Noël Browne of this generation. I urge him to take that suggestion and run with it.

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