Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will share time with Deputy Eamon Ryan.

We have been told on several occasions that Fine Gael is the only party which can be trusted with the economy and fiscal prudence has been preached constantly. This makes it all the more astonishing that the Government is ignoring the quite robust advice of the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

I have listened very carefully to Fianna Fáil on this issue and I have not found anything to disagree with in what its Deputies have said, but this has to be a make or break moment. It is one thing for Fianna Fáil to talk about this issue, but what it does about it is quite another. That will be watched very closely. I do not play those political kinds of games. I rarely say that kind of thing about Fianna Fáil, but this is a significant issue.

The timing of this announcement is quite cynical. We knew there was only one bidder, which is one part of this very flawed process, and so it was not going to be a surprise who the preferred bidder was. That preferred bidder has now been announced but the reality is that a contract will have to be gone through in some considerable detail. There are significant issues in that respect. We will spend up to €3 billion and own nothing at the end of it and we will leave people in rural Ireland to fend for themselves in dealing with this particular entity.

We have seen an example of this when the same company, Granahan McCourt, was involved in a contract for MANs. Under this contract we were delivered the most expensive broadband in Europe. The Analysys Mason report was helpful from that point of view and there have been some changes recently, although we are not sure if they completely translate. We have seen what this forerunner did. The lack of transparency with respect to wholesale to retail sales is a serious issue because not only could this cost a State a fortune, but we will own nothing at the end of it and people in rural Ireland could have expensive broadband if the same circumstances that arose in respect of the MANs contracts occur again.

There is also the issue of National Broadband Ireland. We were told at the briefing yesterday that there would be one nominee to the board, but we do not know to whom that person will be responsible. That has not been worked out yet. In the past some such nominees have been responsible to the company rather than to the State, even in cases where they have been public interest directors. We should also consider the contractors who are going to build this.

We need to know more about KN Network Services and Kelly Comms Limited. We know something about Actavo Ireland Limited because it is the company formerly known as Siteserv. We need to know more about 4site and other subcontractors. We do not really know. We are told there are 1,500 contractors engaged by the subcontractors, but they would be the primary contractors.

People in rural Ireland, including in the parts of my constituency that are included in the intervention area, require broadband. I do not think I heard anybody in this Chamber say otherwise. The big objection is to spending €3 billion by giving it to a private company and owning nothing in the end. That could be very precarious in terms of the cost, take-up and delivery of broadband. The process was flawed throughout. The Smith report was a facade. We were astonished when we saw the results of that report, which looked into the issues prior to the resignation of the previous Minister. Nobody disputes that high-quality broadband is required but the way in which this is happening is just plain wrong. We will look back on this and ask who made the decision.

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