Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Longford County Council and the local development group in Edgeworthstown have pioneered the development of the co:worx remote working hub in what was formerly the Ulster Bank premises in the County Longford town. It is a visionary €1 million plus project, which really found its niche as the pressures of Covid-19 kicked in and we realised the need for spaces and places to facilitate remote working and high-speed broadband in rural areas.

Next week, the project will be one of the finalists in the prestigious .IE digital town awards, which seek to promote awareness, knowledge, use and understanding of digital in Ireland by its citizens, business and communities. The awards highlight the benefits and possibilities of digital and celebrate the digital achievements of local towns, big and small, including Edgeworthstown. We are delighted to see that Edgeworthstown is one of the finalists in the medium town category this year as the town pushes ahead with its ambitious co:worx remote working hub.

The Minister would be mistaken for thinking that all is rosy and is probably wondering why I am eating up valuable Dáil time today with this success story. The reality is, however, that a major project in the county's second largest town, directly across the road from a new €3 million plus public library, which will open later this year, will not, in fact, have the high-speed broadband that the facility and its ultimate users will crave.

Essentially, the community needs a dedicated fibre broadband connection, and a separate connection for redundancy, for both the co:worx building and the new library, which will be located directly across the road. As part of the recent upgrade to the streetscape in Edgeworthstown, Longford County Council had the vision and foresight to include a 110 mm ducting network linking the two buildings. As all the good civil contractors will tell us, most of the heavy lifting has been done with regard to this project.

As I said earlier, this is the second largest town in County Longford, home to a number of leading industries and employers. While the local exchange has fibre broadband to the cabinet, there is, it seems, no provision for fibre to homes or businesses. The provision of a dedicated fibre connection is simply too costly for a start-up, and particularly a community project like co:worx.

We asked Eir to consider expediting the roll-out of its Ireland’s fibre network, IFN, to Edgeworthstown, which it is currently rolling out in nearby Longford. I am aware that Eir has made provision for a similar project in Abbeyshrule, where the project is a similar co-working space called The Yard Hub. There is real hope and expectation in Edgeworthstown, and within the local community, that the organisation charged with taking this to the next digital level will see the merit in these two projects, that is, the public library and the co:worx hub, and work with the local community to ensure that we have the high-speed broadband on which both these facilities will be dependent.

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