Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

After much delay, and at six times the original cost, it is reported that the Government is preparing to sign off on the national broadband plan, NBP, shortly. It is 20 years since a Fianna Fáil-led Government sold off the Telecom Éireann network, which we now all agree was a mistake. It still has consequences today because the State, through the NBP, will now have to pay to lease the existing infrastructure of ducts and poles which we once owned as a people. The Government, following in Fianna Fáil's footsteps, is going to pay €3 billion to a private investment fund, headed by Granahan McCourt, for a broadband network the taxpayer will never own, despite a formal resolution sponsored by my party and overwhelmingly carried in this House only a short couple of weeks ago.

We have also learned that the same preferred bidder, Granahan McCourt, is also bidding for Northern Ireland's Project Stratum at an expected cost of €1,900 per home. The Government is planning to sign off on a deal that will cost €5,000 per home in this jurisdiction while the same product, by the same bidder and on the same island, will cost €1,900 in Northern Ireland. How did the Government manage to preside over a contract negotiation that has allowed the same company to provide the same product at less than half the price in Derry than in Donegal?

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