Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

That is the real difficulty here. We are faced with difficult choices. Everyone recognises the imperative of providing rural broadband. We need our young people to return to live in rural areas. They need to be able to work remotely. We need to create opportunity for new businesses. We need to make sure that all the benefits of this digital revolution are delivered everywhere in the State. Delaying, abandoning or not proceeding present massive difficulties in that regard. However, the process has been highly unsatisfactory to say the least. The fact that it has taken seven years to get to the end of the design phase is a failing. I have heard commentators say the European Union forced us to hive off the 300,000 more attractive customers from the original mapped area. I do not believe that. I believe it was a political decision at Government level to tell Eir to go ahead with that. My recollection of the debate is that it was clear that the Minister had effectively signed off on it. In doing so, he fundamentally undermined the process.

In effect, this process is creating a monopoly and turning it into a private monopoly. That is not just in terms of the national broadband Ireland company. It is also giving Eir an ongoing monopoly on the delivery of the service in the last mile provision and the backhaul, which is how the data is taken from these broadband connections and connected back to the Internet. I have concerns with all of that. The fact that this is being done two weeks before an election rightly raises questions about whether political timing rather than anything else is triggering this debate at this time. As I understand from the briefing we had yesterday, at least we have several months before any contract is signed. It is critical in those few months that we try to address concerns and reduce the downside risks to the State, which are very large.

On the last mile issue, from listening to the officials yesterday I understand they are still open and would still wish to see that the options are considered regarding how we get to the final house, which I believe would be very healthy. I have been saying for a year or two that I would like to see the use of ESB electricity poles and wrapping fibre around electricity wires as an effective option within this project. It would not undermine the process because the bidder would have the capability to negotiate with the ESB as well as Eir. The State needs to act, though. We need to give a clear and immediate signal to the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities to set up the pricing and other regulatory mechanisms that would have to be in place to be able to sign contracts in respect of the ESB delivering the last mile service rather than the Eir pole network. One of the mistakes the Government has made is not to look at the option of reducing it to a single network of poles delivering services to every house in the country. We do not need two. That is the big missed efficiency that has been the result of this process.

With regard to the backhaul network, the officials were saying yesterday that as a percentage of the overall cost of the scheme, it is relatively low. Success will be achieved here not by creating a private monopoly but by incentivising development of the backhaul network and using a variety of backhaul operators. Certainly the MANs should be there but it should go beyond that. I hope and believe there is still flexibility in the contract process to undo some of the damage from a badly handled political system. It is not easy. I have been there myself in the past, negotiating a broadband plan. We did it in two years while this has taken seven. We still have some months to improve what has been a flawed process. The Government should use that time well.

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