Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Last year, the European Commission digital score card report ranked Ireland 19th among the EU States for quality broadband access. We have some of the worst served regions of Europe in terms of broadband service and we rank 42nd in the world in terms of high speed Internet access, despite having the second highest customer costs in the European Union.

The Government attempts to portray Ireland on the international stage as a modern country that is open for business to all types of multinational companies while in reality in many respects Ireland is in the dark ages. Some 1,300 primary schools, 600 business parks and 40% of our population, mostly in rural areas, cannot access decent high speed broadband. This is a major issue, estimated to cost 10,000 jobs annually to rural communities. There are some parts of the country that have yet to get broadband while in cities and urban areas commercial operators can offer very high speed broadband because it is profitable for them to do so.

In 1999 the State sold-off and privatised Eircom, thereby taking away the ability of the State to intervene and build the necessary infrastructure to ensure we have a modern telecommunications and broadband system. Deputy Dooley's statement earlier in this debate that there was consensus in this House in 1999 on the privatisation of Eircom is not correct. There was consensus between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil but other Members of the House spoke out against it. Former Socialist Party member, Joe Higgins, warned that the privatisation of Eircom would be a disaster for all concerned and it was for the almost 600,000 ordinary shareholders who were burned, the workers whose jobs, wages and conditions were slashed and the public whose services, including broadband, declined. The only people for whom it was not a disaster were vulture funds such as Valentia and the employee share ownership trust which asset stripped the company to the bone and sold off Eircell. They walked off with huge sums of money of which they reinvested hardly a cent, leaving the company with huge debts. The State then had to step in and invest in different programmes to make up for the lack of private sector investment. Our disastrous broadband system is the price we are paying for that decision. It is a bit like the man who because he is depressed takes a drink only to end up even more depressed as a result of the drink. The State has privatised the service, the situation has worsened and the Government is using that situation to excuse further privatisation.

At the time of its privatisation Eircom had assets worth €8.5 billion. It was a leader in technology, it was innovative and it was investing. Had it been maintained it would have invested in and delivered broadband throughout the country as a State-owned company not operating on a for-profit basis. That is how we electrified rural Ireland through the ESB in decades past. The State now has to intervene to provide high speed Internet connections for more than 900,000 people because the market and the private sector has failed. Privatisation and the private sector, as we have seen from the privatisation of Eircom, fail to deliver basic services to people.

The Minister has announced plans to sell off and privatise infrastructure. This will result in another handover of taxpayers' money to private profiteers. We oppose the privatisation of this infrastructure. It must be retained in public ownership. The State should invest in and build the infrastructure directly rather than tender it out to private companies to build, run for 25 years and then own.

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