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

I thank the Minister. Going back to the heart of the question, I wish to reiterate the proposals which I may discuss with the Minister. They are complementary to the national broadband plan rather than an alternative to it. I am trying to get a greater understanding of the suggestion that there is a potential for accelerated roll-out. Is that driven by technology, geography or commercial factors? That understanding will help us to realise whether this acceleration can be applied uniformly across the country or whether particular clusters will be in the fortunate position of receiving broadband more quickly. I hope the acceleration is technology-driven, and in a procedural sense I hope we can apply it uniformly so that the entire country receives a broadband connection in the same advanced manner.

If I may touch on the Minister's other responsibilities and an area of common interest, this has many benefits across the board. That hardly needs to be restated. I travelled this morning by train from Sallins in north Kildare. The trains are not full, but even with the pandemic and the reduced economic capacity they are beginning to get busy again. We are at the very early stages of reopening. The sooner we can enable people to work at home to avoid those commutes, the faster we can tackle multiple issues pertaining to the environment, quality of life, public transport capacity constraints etc. I really cannot stress the importance of this enough. Perhaps we might examine that legislation or other options. I am very interested in the specifics of the accelerated roll-out that has been flagged in the programme for Government and the recent Business Post reports.

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