Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak to this important motion. However, I have yet to be convinced that it will help to have broadband provided in rural Ireland any more speedily. Areas in which there is an efficient broadband service in my constituency of Cork South-West are few and far between. Before I continue, I acknowledge and thank the Minister, Deputy Denis Naughten, for visiting my constituency during the summer and meeting many of my constituents to discuss issues related to communications. They are among the 542,000 homes, schools and businesses which account for 40% of the population that have no Internet access.

The Minister inherited a complete mess. During the years Minister after Minister made crazy announcements which sounded good but which were only farcical and the people on the ground knew it.

I note the Minister's dedication and interest in his communications portfolio and appreciate that he inherited the national broadband plan from the 2011 Fine Gael-led Government when it first committed to the roll-out of high-speed broadband to every home and premises in Ireland by 2016. However, given that the ongoing tendering process for the national broadband plan only commenced in 2015, it is little wonder that we have seen the withdrawal of tenders and other general issues in the overall process.

The Government and the Department must review its model. I have long said that the only way we will achieve efficient broadband roll-out is to go back to the communities, but of course we could not do that because then no one would make a nice fortune that way. The communities are the people who know best how to deliver for their own people. In many other European counties, the Leader programme funded communities to roll out broadband locally. No one has ever listened to these suggestions over the years. I was involved in the community council that first brought broadband, and it was wireless, to a rural village in Goleen in west Cork at a time when nobody knew what broadband was. We delivered it by working with the company. We rolled it out, and in many cases it is still there.

I was elected to the Dáil on a mandate to protect and stand up for rural Ireland and my constituency of Cork South-West. I am proud to be a member of the Rural Independent Group. The failure of rural towns and villages to access sufficient broadband is yet another example of how we are being left behind by a booming Dublin. Broadband in the 21st century is a necessity. It is relied upon daily for our educational needs, work and doing business and even keeping in contact with friends and family in every corner of the globe. It is necessary that the Government puts realistic steps in place to allow rural Ireland catch up to the rest of the world.

Eir has gone off the pitch. Many have suggested here tonight that was always its intention. That is something we can leave to our own imaginations. I felt it was only cherry-picking all along. It was a very nice set-up, where it was going to get 300,000 homes connected in areas where Eir itself wanted it. I fully agreed with Deputy Fitzmaurice's comment that its carry-on was nothing short of skulduggery. To try to work with the company is a joke, whether it is its telephone lines or trying to discuss the roll-out of broadband in rural communities. I shudder to think that if we had allowed it continue and it had won the contract, where the people would be. Eir does not listen to the public representatives. It is a law unto itself in its phone service. We saw what happened with Storm Ophelia. Its workers on the ground were murdered trying to bring telephone lines back to people's houses, but if they were asked to go next door they would say they were not allowed because of rules and regulations. Everything had to go through the system and things were going round and round to the point that I expect some houses have only just been reconnected. How was Eir going to roll out broadband to rural communities? I know of a housing estate in Bandon where there are several houses and among them only every second house has broadband. It is a farcical set-up from Eir and no one is answerable. Eir is not answerable to anyone. We are better off without it. I hope this mess can be resolved for the greater good of the people of rural Ireland.

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