Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague Deputy Sherlock for bringing forward this important motion and allowing us once again to debate the pros and cons of this vital national resource. I thank all of the speakers who contributed, particularly those from rural areas, who said, as we all agree, that broadband was totally necessary to be able to lead a modern life, run a modern business or farm, have a modern family home and allow children to use the resource. There is no disagreement on either side of the House on the necessity to have broadband in every community, including, insofar as possible, homes in very remote areas. Obviously, the technology will improve and change. However, it is arrogant in the extreme for Fine Gael Members to stand up with their Independent partners and say they will not review the costing or learn from all of the committee discussions, other discussions and television debates. Who is the man who really says, when he hears costs that he regards as amazing, that he will not review them on the grounds that the money is not his own but that of the public? This is not a sound economic decision.

In modern accounting there is a process called zero-based budgeting, whereby one feeds in all of the data in reviewing the budget to look at everything again. Fine Gael's form of zero-based budgeting is actually zero budgeting because it is stating, with a degree of arrogance, that it does not need to look at the figures and does not care about them. I find this absolutely astonishing.

A really famous quotation from Hamlet reads: "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." It screams to the high heavens that there is something wrong with this contract. The very respected and careful man with the money, the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, has seriously questioned its value. As a senior public servant, he is required to call it out. In the past, somebody such as Deputy Richard Bruton, now the Minister, would have defended a public servant who would have called something out in all honesty as he or she saw it. It is not pleasant for politicians holding office to be told such a thing by civil servants, but it means that, at the least, a serious, detailed examination is required of all that has happened since the figures were first worked out. Changes in technology and the fact that further changes are coming should be considered. It is also a matter of examining the history of assets that are not publicly owned but that are vital to the public for their lives, businesses, schools and community centres. This is a valid and sensible approach. The Government should not be so arrogant as to state it will not go there.

We know from the recent discussions between the Taoiseach and the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, that the Taoiseach has been testing to great effect some of his knowledge of the classics on Mr. Johnson who is a bit of a Greek scholar. There is one statement in the classics that every politician should know, that is, that after hubris, or arrogance, comes nemesis. That is actually what the Government is facing, except by the time it happens it is unlikely to be picking up the pieces. Once again, it will be the taxpayer who will do so. As the taxpayer pays, rural areas will pay on the double for a project that clearly requires re-examination, recasting entry budgeting. I question proceeding given all of what we now know.

In the context of this argument, there has been a lot of discussion about the benefit of public private partnerships. It is an important discussion in Ireland. I have never been a fan of public private partnerships because they are costly and expensive. Very often they cost more than a public investment held in public ownership, as the motion demands. They cost an awful lot more. That is because Governments, including in small countries like Ireland, are very large institutions. They can borrow at a very low rate by comparison with the private sector. With a public private partnership, however, there is a private sector investment vehicle. Essentially, the private sector has to offer a significant return to the investors in the private financial model which costs way above what it costs most governments on the planet. That is the basic problem with public private partnerships.

With public private partnerships comes the ownership model.

The problem with that is that, when the 25 years of ownership under the contract finish, or perhaps even beforehand, a project can be sold off to someone else. We are living in a highly financialised world where the financial model counts enormously in terms of security. The Government has chosen a financialised model. Against all the rules, we know that there were contacts from the final bidders in the project. Initially, there were a number of bidders. For various reasons that I will not recite, they fell away until we were left with just one. We then heard about wining and dining, dinners and contacts, a series of events that led many people to feel that the relationship between the bidder and the contractor - the Government - was too intimate and deeply inappropriate, so much so that one Minister resigned as a consequence. We accept the bona fides of everyone in the House, but there are serious questions about the way in which the contract proceeded. We do not want to commit another couple of million euro to some judge down the road to offer us a detailed evaluation of why this contract was over the top.

Deputy Heydon spoke about the need for broadband in rural Ireland. There is not a person in the country, and certainly not in the Houses, who does not accept that need or does not want it happen. Today, I read the announcement in respect of Strokestown Park House and the further development of the National Famine Museum there by making the most up-to-date interactive technology available for use by adult visitors and, in particular, schoolchildren.

The Fine Gael line is that one should essentially throw caution to the wind, ignore all of the economic evaluations of the project that raise significant questions and just go with it because it is only €3 billion. One way or another, by the time this gets under way-----

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