Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. It must be very nice for the Minister to sit in the House and hear very clear support for this measure from all sides. What is rare is wonderful. Some of the investment in infrastructure over the last decade was very poorly planned. Our population is projected to grow into the future and we face clear infrastructure deficits in terms of water, broadband services, transport, electricity and so on. There are serious problems in these areas and we must face up to them.

This Bill allows for the smarter use of current infrastructure. It will result in increased competition and will allow for the provision of broadband services in areas which currently have no access to such services, particularly in rural Ireland. Deputy Terence Flanagan referred to a lack of competition in Dublin and I hope this Bill will go some way towards addressing that issue. Deputy Flanagan also spoke about the difficulties surrounding the erection of cabinets and the requirement to seek planning permission for same but that did not happen by accident. In the past, contractors erected such cabinets in inappropriate and in some cases dangerous locations. While the requirement to seek planning permission for cabinets may slow things down, it is far better to get it right than get it quickly.

I very much welcome the involvement of the ESB in this because the company has a fantastic record. The ESB's extensive network of overhead lines penetrates practically every part of the country. Deputy Naughten spoke about the positive impact that access to broadband can have on rural Ireland and I agree with him in that regard. Broadband access also has a positive impact on those who are known in my area as "silver surfers" - elderly people who use the Internet. Across the inner city and in other deprived areas, elderly people have taken to using the Internet in a big way. While rural isolation is well documented, urban isolation also exists and the Internet is a fantastic tool for breaking down such isolation. It enables elderly people, for example, to interact with grandchildren who are not living nearby and so forth.

The ESB runs those cables into areas of Dublin that the commercial sector has never looked at. I do not want the exercise to be considered as a purely rural experiment, as urban areas present real possibilities also. I congratulate the Minister on the initiative.

We have been dealing with legacy issues. When the Government came to power it looked at the poor extent of broadband in schools across the country. Deputy Naughten said we needed to roll out the programme more quickly. When the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, came to power there was no broadband in the vast majority of schools. In spite of the mess that had to be cleared up, the matter was corrected in a short period through his initiative with the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn.

This morning I read in the newspaper that the only criticism of the Bill is that it is not moving fast enough. I say in response to the Deputy who advanced the opinion that if we did not have to clean up the unholy mess that was created over the past 14 years we would be much further down the road. Every committee meeting that has taken place since Christmas has dealt with legacy issues - the lack of broadband services, the lack of transport, the fact that the water infrastructure is dying on its feet - yet all we hear is criticism.

Fianna Fáil promised a constructive Opposition. All I can ask is this: where is it? In fact, where is the Opposition? It has been extremely poor and lacking in ideas. The only thing it can manage to do is criticise. As the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, has discovered, even when he comes up with good initiatives the Opposition scratches around and comes up with the complaint that the roll-out could be quicker. We have an extremely poor Opposition.

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