Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

With more than 0.5 million homes, schools and businesses in rural Ireland without high speed broadband and nearly 40% of the population affected by this, we have this situation. It is a fiasco.

What is the position facing a student in one of these areas who has examinations coming up in a few months who does not have proper access? What is the position facing a business that is trying to advertise itself and its products and invest in developing a website with this type of coverage? It is a privatisation fiasco.

Tendering meant that Government was effectively privatising the broadband service infrastructure. When they put it out, they had a choice of what sort of contract to offer: full concession or commercial status. They offered full concession. This meant that a private company builds it, then operates for 25 years on behalf of the State but at the end of the 25 years gets to own the infrastructure. It is a privatisation model of infrastructure. Private operators might be prepared to provide the service to a small city or a large town where there is a big concentration of customers, such as Galway, but for significant parts of rural Ireland it is a different story because one does not have the same clusters and the same potential to make profit, which is the bottom line and the agenda for them.

This is part of a bigger privatisation fiasco. Fianna Fáil is pointing the finger at the Minister across the floor of the House. Fianna Fáil privatised Telecom Éireann in 1999. Ms Mary O'Rourke was the Minister at the time and all of these problems stem from that decision. In Telecom Éireann, prior to privatisation in 1999, there had been much analogue-to-digital investment. In fact, Telecom Éireann was shaping up to be at the top of the class with the explosion of Internet services but then Fianna Fáil stepped in and organised privatisation and it has been downhill all the way ever since then.

When it was put on the Stock Exchange, it was valued at €8.4 billion. When it was sold to Mr. Tony O'Reilly, the price was €3 billion. The mobile arm was sold to Vodafone at the urging of Deputy Ross, who now sits in government. The O'Reilly operation asset stripped the company and made €1 billion for itself in doing so. They loaded up the company with their own debt. It was then sold to Babcock and Brown. They asset stripped the company. They sold the headquarters. They sold the phone masts. They loaded the company with more debts and then it was sold to Singapore Technologies Telemedia, STT, for €39 million.

If we look at the current position with Eir, Eir has a mobile network - the old Meteor network. It has broadband. It has some television packages, including Eir Sports, and the cables. The cables, that are underneath the ground, are the key piece of infrastructure here. I stated that it was sold for €39 million but it was valued at €3.94 billion. The problem was, with all the asset-stripping and debt-loading, it had debts of €3.87 billion.

The only way of sorting this out - the Minister can go around the Houses with his reviews and this and that - is to take the following steps. First, the Minister must re-nationalise and reverse the privatisation and the disaster of that under Fianna Fáil that has been built on by Fine Gael down through the years; and not accept the bad debts of the vulture funds, the debts that have been loaded on by the O'Reillys and Babcock and Brown down through the years, asset-stripping the company and saddling it with their own debts - the Minister should cancel those debts. If the Minister pays compensation, he should pay it on the basis of proven need to ordinary people only. The Minister should not pay the debts of the asset strippers and the billionaires. The Minister will have a nationalised company to invest in broadband. The Minister should provide the service that the private sector has not delivered, is not delivering and will not deliver, and while he does so, provide decent and unionised jobs. The Minister can tell me that flies in the face of EU regulations and all the rest of it - so be it. It is the only way to do the job. The private sector has failed. Privatisation has failed. The Government has failed on this issue. Re-nationalisation is the only way.

See this speech in context