Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is the fundamental difference. What we are doing has never been done anywhere else in the world. I am open to correction on this but, as of today, we have broken all records. Some 13% of premises outside of our cities have access to pure fibre. This is not happening anywhere else in the world. We are at the cutting edge. Vint Cerf, who was at the Digital Data Summit on 16 June, said that Ireland is working on "one of the hardest problems" we know about, which is a "[h]ighly distributed, highly rural, low density population". He continued, "So your success in this will be a real beacon for other populations that have this similar sort of rural population." The globe is looking at what we are doing.

It is a different procurement process, which adds to the challenges, but this is about a 25 year contract. It is not just about the here and now but the medium and long term as well. We do not want a system that is installed and obsolete before it becomes operational, as has been the case in the past. Public money was spent on electronic voting machines and the personnel, payroll and related systems, PPARS, which was obsolete before it even went live. We will have a system that not only meets the needs of the current generation but future generations of this country, particularly those in rural parts of Ireland. We will have a situation where the people of Ballymacward by this time next year will have better broadband than is in Brooklyn, New York.

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