Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. He commented that one of the duties of the unit was to prepare rural communities for the roll-out of high-speed broadband. As he knows rural communities are prepared for that roll-out but the Department is not and the Government keeps delaying the roll-out. What is the involvement of the regional telecommunications development unit in the preparation for the national broadband plan?

Is it good enough that only 17 of 31 local authorities provide the information on mobile phone coverage? What does the Department of Rural and Community Development do to follow up with the remaining local authorities? The Department provided €42,000 to each local authority to have a broadband officer in 2018 and nobody in the Department seemed to follow up on the 14 that could not be bothered to provide the very basic information. The Department was only looking for five sites. As the Minister of State said, he was not looking for a complex map. Fourteen did not bother to send it back and there was obviously no follow-up on the part of the Department even though each local authority has a grant of €42,000. That is not good enough. The Department cannot stick its head in the sand and allow that lack of response to go unnoticed.

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