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

I thank the Deputy for raising a question close to my own heart. The Government's national broadband plan aims to deliver a minimum high speed broadband service of 30 Mbps to every home and business in Ireland. This State intervention can be delivered over a number of different technology platforms and, in designing an intervention strategy and a procurement process, we must be mindful of complying fully with EU state aid guidelines by being technology neutral and not favouring one technology over another. These guidelines do, however, allow for fibre to be deployed as close to the end user as possible. Retail telecommunications providers would then be free to use a variety of technology platforms to reach the final customer. We also need to ensure that State investment delivers a network that can meet current and anticipated future demand. It must be capable of ensuring that there is no urban-rural digital divide and that rural based businesses and residents are not at a disadvantage compared with those in urban areas.

The planned intervention is being designed to deal conclusively with the rural connectivity challenge. The comprehensive mapping exercise we completed in late 2014 shows a clear fibre backhaul deficit in many parts of rural Ireland. This will need to be addressed in any intervention. The intention is to design a clear specification around the services we wish to see delivered and then allow the bidders to submit tenders based on their ability to meet these specification requirements.

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