Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The connected hubs call is open to existing public and private hubs. The grants available can range from €10,000 up to €250,000. Through the fund, we want to expand the capacity and the quality of our existing hub facilities, providing more hot desks, office pods for when one needs some privacy, and audiovisual facilities.

Some of the funding can be used towards marketing costs, which is important because we want people to know the hubs are available to them. In areas where there are no hubs and there is very poor broadband, and I am not sure whether this is the case in the area the Deputy is speaking about, I would tell people to get in touch with their local authority and we will look at providing a broadband connection point. We have been rolling these out throughout the country. They are in areas where there are poor broadband facilities. They may be in a community hall. If there were some place such as this, and the community hall needed to buy additional equipment, I would advise those involved to apply to this fund, which is available to support them.

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