Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would like to be able to stand up and say that when it comes to broadband, people in rural Ireland are happy with the situation. The patience of people in rural Ireland has evaporated. The anger out there is palpable.

High-speed broadband is critical for the development of rural Ireland. It is the one service which, if put in place, puts a rural company on a level playing field with a city based competitor. It encourages employers to stay in rural areas and to keep jobs in areas where they are badly needed. This benefits the local shop, post office and pub, thereby maintaining the fabric of rural Ireland. Rural Ireland will not survive without broadband but, unfortunately, the Government has let it down again.

This country offered Eir access, through its local authorities, to the roads and footpaths. We gave it access to the doorsteps of over 75% of homes and businesses. We have given it an opportunity to make huge profits in the years ahead in the lucrative business of providing broadband in our economy. The chairman of Eir last week made much of how Eir had invested €200 million of its money rolling out broadband to 300,000 homes and businesses in small towns and villages over the past 12 months. However, he neglected to say that the retail value of providing broadband to those homes and businesses will give a healthy return on the investment within a couple of years.

This is not the first time Fine Gael in government has undervalued the assets of our country. We all remember how Ireland’s mobile telephone licence was sold for a song to Esat Digifone and Denis O'Brien in the 1990s. That transaction ended up in the Moriarty tribunal and the High Court. Matters connected to that transaction remain unresolved to this day. On this occasion big business, in the shape of Eir, was allowed to cherry-pick the most lucrative areas in the country, while it strung the Government along with promises of tendering for the less profitable rural areas. However, when it had what it wanted it was out the door like a scalded cat, citing commercial, regulatory and governance issues. The Taoiseach and Government must answer for why Eir was allowed to proceed over the past three to four years without being tied into commitments for rural Ireland. Was it naivety on the part of the Minister in negotiating with a powerful company such as Eir, or was it a case of the Government not being up to the job? These questions will have to be answered.

The most frustrating thing is that it did not have to end this way. This could have been a fair deal for both Eir and our economy. Eir could have negotiated a profitable deal for its company, as was its right and its responsibility to its shareholders. Equally, it was the responsibility of the Government to negotiate a fair deal for its shareholders, the ordinary men and women of the country. By any measure the Government has come up short. Either through lack of ability or carelessness the Irish people have been short-changed once again by the Government.

Some 542,000 homes and businesses around the country lack access to broadband and are located in areas where it has been determined it is not commercially viable to deliver broadband. The NBP is intended to overcome this by providing a subsidy to companies to provide broadband of minimum speeds of 25 Mbps to those areas. There are serious questions about whether this speed will be sufficient to cope with future technological changes. In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, in America declared that speeds below 25 Mbps could no longer even be referred to as broadband. Essentially, the Government will provide a subsidy to the successful private sector bidder for 25 years, at the end of which the bidder will have full ownership of the infrastructure.

The importance of broadband to economic growth cannot be overestimated. The National Competitiveness Council report says regional jobs growth is being stunted, and severe criticism is levelled at the sluggish roll-out of the national broadband plan to all regions. The World Bank has found that a 10% increase in broadband penetration increases economic growth by 1.3% over the long term. The facts do not lie. Ireland ranks 42nd in global rankings for the distribution of high speed broadband, while 40% of the population and 96% of the country geographically still lack commercial or fibre coverage. There are approximately 2.3 million premises in the Republic of Ireland. The chief executive officer of the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association, ISME, Neil McDonnell, said in August 2017:

SMEs in rural areas, in particular, along the border areas and in Munster, are constantly in contact with us about the issue. The frustration for us is that we understood that the national broadband plan was going to be advanced at a certain rate, but it is not.

These are the facts about broadband. We must provide it to the 530,000 rural homes as quickly as possible. We must inject an urgency that has not existed up to now.

When Fianna Fáil was in government it delivered broadband to 234,000 homes and businesses across the country, meeting 100% of its target. This was unprecedented and remarkably forward thinking in next generation technology. Our current broadband policy is clear. We support the roll-out of fibre optic broadband directly to all homes and businesses in the State by way of direct State intervention and using commercial operators. The only technology that will fully future proof this delivery is via fibre to the home. Fibre to the home is fibre optic cable capable of delivering download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second or 1,000 Mbps directly to households and businesses. With rapid advances in technology, Irish households should not have to settle for moderate rate Internet speeds which will be overtaken by technological progression in the next five years.

We support the roll-out of fibre to the home and to all premises via a combination of private operators, direct State intervention where it is not commercially viable and facilitating community solutions such as group broadband schemes. However, the benchmark level of 30 Mbps as the minimum threshold for the so-called high-speed broadband promised in the Government’s plan is paltry and represents second rate ambition which will be quickly overtaken by technological advances by the time it is estimated to be completed in 2022. Given the Government's record it is hard to anticipate completion in anywhere near that timeframe. Any State intervention must use a fibre optic based network delivering broadband via fibre to the home technology directly to each premises.

Fianna Fáil has taken steps to accelerate the roll-out of broadband in rural areas by bringing forward a Bill that would make it easier for telecommunications providers to share infrastructure assets such as masts and ducting. This would not only increase connectivity but would likely reduce consumer costs and prevent the construction of unnecessary masts. Our country has a proud tradition of attracting foreign direct investment. Reputation is important on the world stage. How we have handled the roll-out of broadband so far has seriously damaged our reputation. We cannot afford any more slip-ups in this process. The job ahead is difficult and has been made more difficult due to developments in the past week. However, failure is not an option with this project as the stakes for the country are high. I urge the Minister to listen to the Opposition and not to compound the mistakes already made by refusing to recognise a crisis when it is staring him in the face.

If rural Ireland is to survive it must have modern infrastructure. Broadband is an essential part of that. The Government's record to date is extremely poor. The removal of Eir from the market will make the job more difficult, but we will insist on the Government delivering broadband to rural Ireland.

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