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

Recently, the Deputy and other colleagues supported a Bill in the House that facilitates the ESB entering into a joint venture with a leading telecommunications operator to use its supply infrastructure to roll out fibre to parts of rural Ireland that could never have hoped to access it. This arrangement is being concluded and the preferred company selected following the submission of expressions of interest is Vodafone. The new venture will be a 50:50 joint venture between the ESB and Vodafone, the purpose of which is to alleviate at least some of Deputy Colreavy's heartache. I expect an announcement on this in the near future.

In fairness to the commercial sector, it must be acknowledged that this sector is putting €2 billion into investment into this area. For example, Eircom has put in an additional €400 million to ensure it exceeds provision to 1.4 million premises, as distinct from the 1.1 million premises pledged as recently as two years ago. Therefore, there is significant commercial investment, the separate ESB-joint venture and the mapping exercise in which we are engaged in order to get State aid approval for us to build out the fibre network.

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