Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I live in rural Ireland and most people there have completely lost faith in the possibility that broadband will be delivered. It is a reality. That is not to say that many people do not have some service, as they might have broadband coming from a pylon or something that is grand during the day but when evening comes and children start doing their homework, the service goes to nothing. It is the experience of most people and they have come to expect nothing better. It is an indictment of the Government's promises going back to 2012.

I spoke recently to a man in County Sligo who has a small business in a rural area. He is not isolated at all and is on a main road. He has been pleading for five years for broadband as it would make a huge difference to his potential to employ more people in his business. He says he may has well have been trying to look for Osama bin Laden as somebody in Eir or similar companies to provide a service. He found it impossible and nobody told him anything; he drew a complete blank. People are frustrated and these are the very people the Government has told us it wants to help. These people get up in the morning, work hard, create employment and do stuff but they are being let down across the length and breadth of rural Ireland. They are being let down because there was a choice between the market providing the service or the State accepting that it had a responsibility to provide a service to its people. The Government chose the market.

This goes right back to 1999, when Eircom was sold. I remember the reason given for the sale was that investment was required to provide broadband. Broadband was needed and the Government could not do it so we were going to need the big investors. Everything was going to be great, so what happened? It is a total mess. It is a lesson that needs to be learned. In almost every country in the world, when it comes to proper strategic infrastructure it takes the state, which has the capacity to borrow money at the right level and the confidence to bring in investors to make things happen, to provide that infrastructure.

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The state has to kick-start it and make things happen.

In this instance, the State is failing and that must be recognised. This is a failure. If somebody steps up and states that he or she made a mess of it, people might start to believe that the Government wants to do something about it. As long as it keeps denying that there is a problem, no one will believe it has any interest in resolving that problem. In my county, Leitrim, there are just over 22,000 households, of which fewer than 11,000 will be provided for by Eir and the other companies. It will be left to the State to provide for the remainder. I have seen lines being attached to top of the Eir poles - some of them have been up there for three years - but nobody has broadband. There are significant questions to be asked about Eir and how it carries out its business. The problem is that the company was allowed to cherry-pick and it cherry-picked the spots where it was going to do this. It then the lines past every other house and left matters there. We need to get a grip on this. It is time for the Government to step up to the mark and admit that this has been a total cock-up from start to finish and that it is going back to the drawing board.

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