Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

After the debacle of the national children’s hospital, here we are discussing another capital project that has been mired in controversy from day one. What happened on Tuesday was yet another in a series of announcements on the rolling out of broadband in Ireland. The first such iteration was as far back as 2012 and that promised high-speed broadband to 100% of homes and businesses by 2020. In 2016, Fine Gael made yet another commitment to roll out broadband to every home and business within three to five years. Last year the national development plan was published and these commitments were yet again reiterated.

Again this week we have seen the latest announcement. The common thread is that the Minister and Taoiseach have been at the heart of all those announcements. However, no contract has been signed. Here we are in 2019 and not one metre of fibre optic cable has been rolled out. I have serious concerns, as does the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, with the risk and exposure the Irish taxpayer is being asked to take. We learned this morning in The Irish Timesthat, despite the commitment given by the Taoiseach some months ago when he said the Dáil would be involved in the decision, the full cost of rolling out broadband could be as much as €5 billion. Is this true? How much will the Granahan McCourt consortium be coughing up? Is it the case that it will have recouped the initial expense of the roll-out by 2028 as raised by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform? How much private equity is being provided and how much by way of debt is being put on the table? If the taxpayer is going to have to foot this bill, the Government needs to be upfront with the people on what exactly it is committing to. The Minister says he that he cannot divulge this information because it confidential and commercially sensitive. When there is only one bidder remaining, this argument does not stack up. Simply put, the Minister cannot divulge this information because it is not certain. It is not certain because there is no contract. There is no contract because the Government is not ready. The reason it announced this before it was ready is simple and obvious. It is as plain as the nose on my face: 24 May, election day.

At the end of it all, the State will own nothing. Presumably after 25 years the State will have to negotiate a new contract with the private consortium, whoever that may be. It appears that this infrastructure could be sold to anyone from anywhere and at any time. After 25 years, if the Government’s take-up estimate is correct, the consortium will have a wholesale revenue stream of about 400,000 customers. We have no idea of the risks that may be ahead and nothing in this week’s announcement has allayed my fears. This week we have seen the same old spin machine in full action.

We are told that Fine Gael is doing this for rural Ireland and that it is the saviour of rural Ireland but this is nothing more than political guff. If Fine Gael was serious about rural Ireland, it would have provided more than just eight houses in eight years in Offaly and would have established a transition fund to help the region I am from to deal with the debacle that is the loss of Bord na Móna and the peat briquette and harvesting business. If Fine Gael had the back of rural Ireland, it would have insisted that the Department of Education and Skills adhere to pupil-teacher ratios in small three-teacher schools and would have reinstated Midoc facilities considering it tells us it has a new GP contract that heralds the saviour for rural Ireland. This happened on our watch up to last year because of Brexit as but for that, we would be well out of here. Fine Gael has failed rural Ireland and this week's announcement has in no way convinced me that it can deliver this plan on time.

If we speak about the deluge of documents released yesterday at 1.55 p.m., it emerged that over the life of the national development plan, an extra €1.5 billion will be required to pay for this plan. Yesterday, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform said that no projects will be impacted because of this decision. His Department has outlined the possible implications of spending an extra €1.5 billion on broadband. I could go through it but it is on the public record and involves the loss of 2,000 social housing units, the Tralee wastewater network, the Kilkenny regional water supply scheme, the Sligo western distributor road, the KillaIoe bypass, the Dunkettle interchange, the Moycullen bypass, 18 primary schools serving 8,600 pupils, new ambulance bases and deployment points and nine to ten primary care centres. It also involves significant reductions in allocations from remaining programmes, including flood relief works, prisons etc. This is unprecedented. Given this advice from the Minister's own Department, the Minister insists that no capital project will be impacted. Who is he trying to cod? Clearly, there will be an impact. The Minister will pay for this out of the capital envelope outlined in the national development plan or he will raise taxes or he will pay for it out of current expenditure. Will we see less spending in mental health, education and housing? Will there be fewer resources for nurses, doctors and consultants? Will there be sufficient funds to pay for social welfare reforms?

The bottom line is that we will not get those answers in the limited time here today. I have asked that the Minister and the Secretary General come before the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. Then we may get to the root cause of this and get some idea or conception of what is contained here because at the moment, it is ludicrous that we could be told that one bidder remains and that the Government now has a preferred bidder. Is a split personality involved? It does not make any sense.

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