Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In the past week challenges facing rural Ireland have been to the fore. We hear much talk of the national planning framework, the vision for the next 20 years, and what it will mean for our country. The roll-out of fibre-to-the-home broadband is key to bridging rural Ireland's digital deficit. To halt the decline in our rural communities, this issue must be addressed. However, the Government's national rural broadband roll-out is in a complete shambles. Having started the tendering process in 2015, the Government has dragged its heels to the extent that there is now only one bidder left in the process, Enet. In September 2017, one of the three bidders in the process withdrew owing to the lengthy and complicated tendering process. This should have triggered alarm bells for the Government but, unfortunately, it did not. We learned last week, in January 2018, that Eir, another large and experienced operator, has also pulled out. The process had become so complicated that potential bidders found it impossible to respond in a commercially viable way. These blackspots of broadband wasteland are costing jobs, threatening rural sustainability and creating a digital divide. I have serious reservations about the national planning framework, the vision for the next 20 years, if we cannot deliver broadband to 500,000 houses in Ireland.

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