Dáil debates

Tuesday, 6 February 2018

National Broadband Plan: Motion [Private Members]

 

9:35 pm

Photo of Caoimhghín Ó CaoláinCaoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Broadband is to rural Ireland today what running water and electrification was back in the 1960s. It is a vital and necessary service provision that is a core essential for business development, community development and connectivity for the most infrastructurally deprived areas of our island.

Universal roll-out will be a massive infrastructure undertaking reported to be costing up to €1 billion. That is a serious amount of money in anybody’s understanding. It is, therefore, quite incomprehensible that we have gone from a tendering process involving five bidders to a situation presently where we are left with just one bidder, namely, eNet. What is the reason for the withdrawal of four of the original bidders in what looks like, on paper at least, a most commercially lucrative contract?

I have to say it is convenient for Fianna Fáil to come in here tonight and call on the Fine Gael-led Government to “guarantee that high-speed broadband is delivered to every Irish home and business in a prompt manner, even if this requires greater or full State intervention”. I remember very well, as a Dáil Deputy here over many years, in May 2002 the then Fianna Fáil Minister for Public Enterprise, Mary O'Rourke, announcing Fianna Fáil’s pre-election technology policy. This included a plan to “provide broadband infrastructure throughout the state, placing Ireland within the top 10 percent of OECD countries for broadband connectivity”. It went on to declare, in bold terms, that, “Within five years we will have wired the island”. My God, have they what?

Five years later, in 2007, the Fianna Fáil manifesto included a pledge to “Complete the roll-out of broadband throughout the country with the National Broadband Scheme”. I could continue in this vein highlighting even more recent similar pledges but, sadly, the past will not change where we are now though. What it does, however, is prove that Fianna Fáil failed rural Ireland for a period of nine years at a time the country was, as others say, awash with money. It preferred to dish it out in tax breaks. It is ironic in the extreme, therefore, to see this Fianna Fáil motion calling for possible “greater or full State intervention”. Fianna Fáil sold off and privatised Telecom Éireann, a company that would have been best placed to roll out a truly national broadband scheme that would have made its way up every boreen and byway to install broadband without taking profit into account. This is what public service companies do.

Fianna Fáil began the sell off of virtually all our publicly-owned companies and it was Fianna Fáil which began the journey towards privatisation. Let us be clear, and the Minister can have no comfort in this, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the Minister's former party, are as culpable as each other in failing to roll out the national broadband scheme.

In my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan the broadband coverage is nothing short of scandalous. In County Cavan, there is a 40% geographic area relating to 17,150 premises requiring State intervention through a national broadband scheme. In County Monaghan, the figures are even worse. There is a 47% geographic area not covered relating to 15,792 premises. That is a very serious situation and is part of the reason we have a serious absence of that young cohort of people, 18 to 35 years of age. We should look at the profile of Cavan-Monaghan today. Our young people have been forced if not to emigrate certainly to migrate within this State.

This week we are talking about national planning frameworks, future planning and capital infrastructure investment. I want to state clearly to both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, in their respective capacities as Government partners through their confidence and supply agreement, that this project cannot be held up for any further period.

We have put forward an amendment to this motion calling for the progressing of the national broadband plan through State ownership. That would be my strong preference.

Let there be no question about it. We believe in addressing this issue, as the Kelvin project would indicate, on an all-island basis. That is something to be commended. We look at the potential of great instability post-Brexit. I believe that serious capital infrastructure investment should be looked at from a 32-county perspective and on an all-Ireland economy basis. It makes absolute sense.

We call on all parties to stop the neglect of rural Ireland, to allow rural communities reach their full potential and to prosper, and to retain our young people with a real future in the counties and communities of their birth. Let us commence the roll-out of broadband to all communities and with the urgent resolve that is now so clearly needed.

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