Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Thank you, Ceann Comhairle, for letting me in. I was struggling to make it here in time when the Government missed the last slot. I mentioned some of this earlier, but another Minister of State, Deputy Feighan, is present. The goals of the national broadband plan are laudable and, we in People Before Profit believe, essential for rural Ireland.

The provision of the services to more than 500,000 addresses is not only vital for businesses; it is vital for ordinary households and schools, etc., in an evermore online world where high-speed internet access is not some kind of a luxury but a bare minimum needed to participate fully in this society. It becomes even more essential for access to State services and more essential still in a coronavirus-ridden world for remote learning and working. There is no doubt about its importance.

However laudable the goals, the current plan, for historical reasons, falls on every metric. We have been repeatedly told this is essential infrastructure and must be provided by means of massive taxpayer subsidies of €3 billion, but even the most risky gambler probably would not bet that the figure will not rise, as has happened in other outsourced national projects. The primary justification is the lack of State telecommunications infrastructure, but that is the result of a Government decision. Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, in 1999, committed to privatising Telecom Éireann and the absolutely disastrous outcome of that decision is well known in this House.

Our national communications infrastructure was repeatedly bought and sold, including by many of the big business names in Ireland. At every stage, the company was loaded with debt and sweated for every cent that could be extracted, starving the company of needed infrastructural investment and leaving it incapable of anything like the services required, because it simply could not generate the necessary profits for whomever or whatever entity happened to own it at the time. Fintan O'Toole famously said at the time that the assets and equity funds of that company were "passed around [from Billy to Jack] like a joint at a student party". However, the decision to privatise Telecom Éireann did not happen in a vacuum. It has been part of a deep ideology of outsourcing essential services for State functions to the private sector and it always has dire outcomes for those of us who rely on those services and for every person and taxpayer in the country, as the costs always spiral. Private entities involved must have their profits protected, regardless of the cost to the State, or the level of service provided.

The list of failures is probably too long to go into here, but I will mention a few: public-private partnerships on toll roads; school buildings that are faulty and on which we pay more and more to have them sorted out; the national convention centre; the national children's hospital; and the cervical check programme. Even with the history of a great number of observers of this plan having very serious concerns about it from the outset, it has developed in an even worse fashion than most of us had feared. We now have a €3 billion plan over 25 years, the infrastructure of which we will not own at the end.

As if all of this was not bad enough, recent revelations on the financial structures and entities behind the NBI show us the company created a plan with a network of at least 13 different companies throughout Ireland, Luxembourg and America. In fact, we now know that David McCourt's firm only owns approximately 10% of NBI, despite contrived corporate structures that seem to indicate he has a controlling stake.

Anyone paying attention to the housing crisis, which all of us have been, knows the Oak Hill Advisors vulture fund has specialised in discounting bad loans to sweat borrowers and underline assets for cash. In the previous Dáil, Fianna Fáil famously called for the nationalisation of the broadband plan, but it is silent on that issue now. However, I echo that call, on behalf of People Before Profit, for any essential infrastructure in this State not to be outsourced like the list of those I have mentioned, and this outsourcing programme is a disaster. Not only is it a disaster, but those who are given the responsibility to oversee the funding, ownership and control of the company is Ernst & Young. It did a great job on the banks when it audited Anglo Irish Bank and if that is what we are relying on, then God help Ireland, because we are heading down a disastrous road.

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