James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is a sense of déjà vuabout the debate. In the short time during which I have been a Deputy, we have had numerous discussions on the matter. Since 2011, when the previous Fine Gael-led Government assumed office, the first promise was made, and here we are almost in 2020. Two themes have emerged. The bill keeps multiplying but not a scrap of fibre has been laid under the contract, which is not yet even in place. I, along with many colleagues on this side of the House, have highlighted the wastefulness, the dogged delays, the obfuscation, as well as the failure to grasp the nettle in respect of the issue and to examine the ways the process could be completed without having recourse to the current arrangements.

I am the Vice Chairman of the Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment and during the summer, we scrutinised and studied the proposal in detail. Without outlining all the recommendations of the committee, it made more than a dozen recommendations for direct action that arose from detailed scrutiny of the proposal. None of the recommendations was to endorse the tender or the Government's plan, and in fact, endorsement was rejected by a majority vote of the dedicated Oireachtas committee tasked with scrutinising the tender. To give a flavour of the findings of the committee, we noted that the State proposes to throw €3 billion at a consortium, or what appears to be a finance house with a couple of subcontractors hanging off it, with no proven track record of delivery of broadband or other infrastructure. While I carry the flag for no particular bidder, this is at a time when Eir has appeared before the committee to tell us it could have delivered the project for less than €1 billion. If nothing else, therefore, we are paying treble for a project when there has not yet been a line of fibre or even a duct yet dug. The entire project has been obfuscated, misapplied and mismanaged from the outset, yet nine years later we are no closer to a decision.

All the while the interminable negotiations and the unseemly tender business have been progressing, the technology has been advancing. The very purpose of the tender has now been called into question. While these interminable negotiations have been ongoing, the private sector has been penetrating those areas of its own accord with different technology mixes. Firms have rolled up their sleeves and got on with it. A few moments ago the Minister talked about the 540,000 houses still to be connected. A previous Minister would have talked about 800,000 homes to be connected. Perhaps the next Minister will tell us about 300,000 houses, and so on ad infinitum. I am not sure what the final number will be but it is clear that the number of homes to be targeted by State intervention is decreasing at exactly the same time that the cost of that intervention is multiplying exponentially. On the matter of cost, we know the views of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, as my colleagues have already mentioned. Mr. Robert Watt has done the State some service by putting those views on record. I have commended him in the committee and I commend him again tonight on stating on record that the cost-benefit analysis does not stack up. This project could break the bank, especially when added to the children's hospital and all the other wasteful and wanton projects commissioned by this Government.

Regarding the raw figures, I note that Imagine Communications Group is now posing a challenge. That group has now rolled out 5G solutions through alternative technologies. It is well documented that Eir took 300,000 homes out of the group of 800,000 because it could do so. Every step of the way, a new provider with a new system and a new technology comes into the intervention area and offers to do it commercially, saying there is no need to throw hard-earned State money at the problem when other solutions exist.

We have missed the opportunity to take positive practical steps along the way. There have been many different initiatives and the Minister's predecessors and the Department have formed multiple task forces. There have been three different task forces on the delivery of rural broadband and mobile telephony, which is a related concern. There have been many practical recommendations, very few of which have actually been enacted. Each Minister seems to come along and reheat them as if in a microwave, take the report out again a year later and announce it to great fanfare without actually doing anything about it. I have drafted legislation which tackles many practical aspects of these issues, such as planning permission requiring fibre to the doorstep rather than the roadside. Ducting is so expensive to lease from the likes of Transport Infrastructure Ireland that it is actually cheaper for homeowners to dig up the road themselves than to hire ducting, even within two State agencies. I refer to absurd anomalies, conflicting local area plans, arcane planning processes and the lack of a streamlined fast track for this kind of infrastructure. These factors all combine to make it more difficult for the private sector to get into the market yet it is doing so anyway, more quickly and more cheaply than the State infrastructure, which has yet to pass "Go".

I will make one final point before I conclude and yield to my colleagues. My party passed a motion on this 18 months ago and I introduced legislation on this two years ago. There have been multiple attempts to tackle these issues on this side of the House, through legislation, Private Members' motions and other methods. We have all heard sorry sagas from all sides of the House about voting in the last few days. However, it is beyond doubt that the Government has debased the voting system. It has done a disservice to democracy by ignoring every motion, vote and Private Members' bill that has been introduced from any other side of the House. That is a disservice to democracy.

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