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

I thank the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, for taking the debate. As I have discussed these issues with him before, I ask him to be sympathetic and to focus on solutions to the matter I am about to raise. We are all aware of how critical high-speed quality broadband is to our daily lives. That has been exacerbated during the pandemic and the recent lockdowns, which have now run for the best part of the year. Following Government advice - it is absolutely the right thing to do - people are working from home en masse. Certainly, through level 5 and the hard lockdowns, people are encouraged, advised and mandated to work from their homes. They are doing so.

People are attending courses of study online. Almost all third level courses are being conducted remotely and for a large period of the year second level was also being delivered as an online service. With social contacts, household visits etc. banned, people are interacting with family members at the weekends or at other times through Zoom meetings and other online interactions, keeping in touch with the family and extended family.

Various cultural, heritage and information events have all gone online. Any kind of conference, seminar or activity has gone online as well as essential Government services, including Revenue, healthcare, social welfare advice, online planning etc. Pretty much everything a citizen wants to do or has to do for their daily life is now online.

In many ways this is a good thing. It provides an opportunity to move to a different way of living and perhaps post-pandemic we will embrace that, cut out commuting etc. and begin to move to this. That is a medium-term consideration for which this is even more essential. Right now, there is an immediate need to address these matters. To do all those things we need high-speed quality connection.

I represent north Kildare and I have no doubt this issue is replicated across the country. I make no apologies for representing my constituency and the people I serve. I am speaking today on behalf of the people in rural east Kildare - places like Rathmore, Kilteel, Eadestown, down to Tipperkevin, right along that west Wicklow-east Kildare belt, nestling in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains, 17 miles from Leinster House, straddling the County Dublin border. A place called the Four Roads is one step from Dublin and yet signal speeds are less than 1 to 2 Mbps download and virtually non-existent for upload.

This community is a very resourceful one. It had 320 residents when it was last surveyed by the residents themselves. They are used to solving their own problems in the way that rural communities do. They are a highly capable educated professional community, including many engineers and IT people who have done their own analysis and investigation and tried to solve this problem. They have been very proactive and have managed to an extent in the past.

However, with copper cables getting speeds of 1 to 2 Mbps, they are struggling as they try to run businesses from home, log in from home or do professional services from home where they need to upload and download files of significant sizes. Students are trying to study. I mentioned other services a moment ago. It also is a black spot to get a 4G signal and in parts they cannot get a mobile signal. This is not in the back of beyond; it is 17 miles from Leinster House straddling the Dublin border with a very high density of professional persons, people trying to solve these problems for themselves. At this stage they cannot solve it for themselves. They need urgent Government intervention.

I believe the solution is tantalisingly close. The Blessington exchange runs up one side and the Naas exchange runs up the other side. It would not be so difficult to connect them to one or the other. I prevail upon the Minister to attempt to move this forward as a matter of urgency.

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