Eamon Scanlon (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this issue. I met people from an English company in Sligo this morning who are prepared to set up a business in my home town of Ballymote. The Minister is very familiar with it; he knows the area very well. Unfortunately, we do not have the broadband service to allow this company to start up. It is a small company. We are looking at eight to ten jobs. We have the premises but, unfortunately, we do not have the broadband.

It would be very easy for me, or anybody else, to come in here tonight and criticise the Minister but I will not do that. The Minister set out on a programme. Unfortunately, we had three companies tendering for this contract. Two of them, despite what I am sure were the Minister's best efforts, have pulled out and we are down to one. It is easy for those companies to pull out, particularly Eir, because it has cherry-picked the best and easiest to manage people who need broadband in terms of cities and so on.

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