Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is regrettable that my constituency colleague basically has been forced to resign by the Taoiseach. That is the first thing I want to put on the record. I have listened with interest. It is nearly like how it is down the country; when someone dies, everyone says how great they were once they are gone. I was at the talks about forming a Government. We spent seven hours with each Department. I have listened to what has been said today. When Eir was looking for 330,000 extra connections, which were in towns, as Deputy Stanley noted, it was said that they would not be given to it. What happened afterwards was that when a proposal was put back, our good old friends - the EU - made the State give away the good apples on the tree and left the bad apples because we could not give state aid. This needs to be put on the record.

We are hearing things about what we could hang it on. Anybody looking into this, as many of us living in rural Ireland have done, know that if we were to hang it on ESB wires, we would need electrical engineers for every part of it so that is not going to happen. The only way we can do it is through the Eir poles. Legislation was to be brought in here.

Regrettably, today has shown that public relations and how things look are more important that delivery. A Minister has been forced to resign. There might be a hair's breadth between looking for a resignation or not looking for it in some of the statements I have heard but the reality is that this evening, we must know where we are on broadband because the people of rural Ireland are the big losers today. I have heard a debate about a dinner. If any of the Members from rural parts of Ireland ever attended a mart, were about to sell an animal, had one buyer and did not sell it within the ring, they would go and talk to that buyer and see whether they could get more money. They would do a thing called horse dealing. We have become too politically correct in this country. One cannot look at or talk to a person. It is totally different if there are three or four different operations in a bidding process but the reality is that two dropped out and we had one left. Beggars cannot be choosers. If rural Ireland wants broadband, we have to persist with it. Yes, it will cost more but what do we want? Do we want a two-tier society? As I pointed out today, when four computers go on in a school near me in Kilcrone, it crashes. Do these children not deserve it? Obviously, the Taoiseach, in his better wisdom, has decided that these children in a rural part of Ireland do not deserve broadband and that it was easier to go for the good PR stunt, make sure he does not have confidence in someone, get rid of them and probably call an election, as we have been hearing over the past couple of days, for 7 December. If that is politics, it stinks.

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