Kevin O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The first line of the motion puts the scale of the crisis into perspective. Some 542,000 homes, schools and businesses, representing 40% of our population and 90% of our geographic cover, have no access to high-speed broadband. There is no possibility of a connection on the horizon. It has taken another Fianna Fáil motion in Private Members' time to get the Government to even discuss the issue. This is despite the fact that my party has called on the Government over the past number of months to provide clarity on the matter.

I have no doubt the usual Fine Gael rhetoric will come into play here with it asking what Fianna Fáil did when it was in government. This will no longer wash with the public. We are now into our seventh year of a Fine Gael-led Government. It has further isolated our rural areas, turning them into some of the most backward in Europe. The ongoing tendering process has been nothing less than a farce. It must be recognised that the tendering process began in 2015 with the then Labour Party Minister, Pat Rabbitte, initiating the process, some time before the Minister, Deputy Naughten, assumed his role. It would be unfair to lay the full blame at the current Minister's door. He inherited a national broadband plan with no structure or forward planning. It was just another Government plan with fancy graphs and text to fill the Government press launch.

The warning signs were there last September when SIRO decided to exit the tendering process. Fianna Fáil then asked for the criteria of the tendering process to be published. There was no transparency forthcoming. Over a week ago we heard a report that the Government was trying to pull a fast one with the hope of carrying out the work on the cheap by slashing the price of access to Eir's telephone poles. This had the potential to cause further delay. This is, in effect, like asking a mechanic to go into another man's garage and carry out the work for a cheaper fee. It was ignorance on behalf of the Government to think that this would not aggravate one of the potential bidders.

Prior to my becoming a Member of the Dáil, road repairs were a big issue. Now broadband is my pothole issue.

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