Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, the Government is acutely aware of the pressures in rural Ireland in terms of the need for broadband access. Like many Deputies, I grew up on a farm in a rural community. I know the responsibility the Government has to ensure that people in rural Ireland as well as people in urban centres can access the information and the opportunity that the Internet provides. They need speed to be able to do that and, by and large, delivering that speed requires fibre, which is exactly what the Government is committed to delivering by effectively State sponsoring the roll-out of broadband to the 500,000 or so households that currently do not have it. We are going to see that through.

We have been through a very complex tendering process to get there in terms of finalising a tender that will last for 25 years. That has been a competitive process. In many competitive processes, commercial operators pull out for commercial reasons if the processes do not suit them. That is what has happened here. We also have another operator - there is now only one left - that has been adamant that it is committed to this process. It wants to work with the Government on it and believes that it can do this.

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