Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The track record in terms of trying to get broadband roll-out for the whole country was 4 Mbps to 5 Mbps in certain instances under the previous programme. However, in trying to roll out a minimum of 30 Mbps to every house, the biggest challenge for Government is to ensure that it follows EU competition guidelines. That is where the urgency and the focus have been in terms of ensuring that legally we are not pushing one technology over another. As the Deputy is aware, some parts of his constituency have wireless.

From listening to people, fibre is a possible solution. There is a backbone of cabling belonging to Eircom and infrastructure belonging to the ESB. These could form part of the solution. Those companies have been ploughing ahead and putting fibre on their backbones and Eircom has announced that it will bring broadband to more homes and premises. More than 1 million premises have it now. The critical issue for the Government is to get this right, that being, a minimum of 30 Mbps. It cannot be the maximum in the long term, especially with so much data.

See this speech in context