Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last week, I attended a presentation in the AV room hosted by Deputy Bernard Durkan. It included most of the communications companies in the State. Deputy after Deputy took to the floor to castigate these telecommunications companies in the strongest possible terms over the desperately poor mobile and mobile internet coverage throughout the State. The level of anger was a sight to behold. Deputies were outdoing each other out of anger. I found myself agreeing with the Deputies wholeheartedly. They were right. A large area across the southern State is a no-man's land for mobile phone and mobile Internet coverage. People cannot do business, make social calls or even ring emergency services when they need them. We are talking not about far-off headlands in the west, but about a couple of miles outside major towns in the Dublin region.

On a separate occasion last week, my dog was barking and my son was giving out to the dog for barking. I laughed because that is what dogs do - they bark. In the same way, private companies maximise profits. That is what they do. They cherry-pick the most attractive elements of deals, invest in infrastructure to increase revenue streams and upgrade and maintain systems only on the basis of the income they generate. Shouting at a private company for maximising profits is as stupid as shouting at a dog for barking, especially if those Deputies doing the shouting are the Deputies who privatised the system in the first place. Many of those Deputies were the same ones that stood over the licence requirements necessary for those companies in the telecoms industry. An example of that would be the requirement for ComReg to measure signals, which means that it does not measure the quality of the signal, only that there is one. They measure only on the main road itself. We know that handing over systems lock, stock and barrel to private companies is a dangerous system that comes back to haunt Deputies afterwards.

The truth of the matter is that the privatisation of Eircom was one of the most damaging decisions made by any Government in this State. The subsequent owners asset-stripped Eircom for the benefit of their shareholders and to the detriment of families, business and communities up and down the country. It has cost the State billions of euros and has devastated the economic well-being of whole regions throughout the State. The decision was made on the basis of the intellectual fashion of the time. It was believed that privatisation was good and public ownership was bad. Unfortunately, that intellectual fashion is still firmly embedded in Fine Gael and maybe in the Independent Fine Gael Deputy we have before us today. Government's investment in infrastructure is one of the best things a Government can do because it creates efficiencies and competitive advantages now and into the future.

We have seen that investment collapse by about €6 billion over the past seven years. This process is part of that retrenchment from Government investment into State goods.

Regional development has been one of the biggest burning issues, yet we know that massive sections of our society are currently second-class digital citizens. However, the Government's response is to provide €200 million over seven years, which is €28 million per year. This particular Government plan is a hollow husk in response to a disconnected, forgotten and ignored community.

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