Dáil debates

Wednesday, 18 November 2020

Working from Home (Covid-19) Bill 2020: Second Stage [Private Members]

 

11:20 am

Photo of Richard O'DonoghueRichard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In County Limerick, a person can look at the map and see the orange areas and all the different areas they say we have broadband.

Nineteen houses built by the local authority in Patrickswell, which is within walking distance of Limerick, had no broadband. A company called Imagine offered to give them broadband because Eir could not give them a connection and claimed it could take two or three years. My office is inundated with calls from people saying they cannot get connections.

My office has an Eir connection and we did a small study on Eir. For the past two months we have been trying to contact Eir over a small issue in our office. We have nine hours of office time given to Eir and we are going around in circles. This is where our problem is. There is no infrastructure within Eir, and we depend on companies like Imagine to provide broadband to people in our areas.

There are factories in Kilmallock. Fibre broadband is provided in the town, including as far as the mart in Kilmallock, but Celtic Engineering, 100 yd behind the mart in Kilmallock, does not have broadband. Irema which is making masks for us does not have broadband. It is in an industrial estate 100 yd off the main route. The statistics that National Broadband Ireland is giving us are absolute bull. It is provided to the main routes and not going off the side routes. It is doing townlands; it is not coming off the main roads. The statistics being given to the Government are false.

As Deputies, we get calls every day identifying where the faults are and we are trying to patch it in, but Eir is not answering our calls. It is sending us around in circles and not doing its job. It advised us that in certain areas in County Limerick it will be seven years before people will get broadband. We then need to go to other companies to see if they will fill that gap. This is not right that 100 yd from a fibre cable, a factory with 300 or 400 workers cannot get connected to fibre broadband. Companies like Eir should be held accountable and give the proper statistics to the Government.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.