Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation and thank the Aire Stáit for dealing with it. I welcome the publication of the Bill, particularly the provision for additional powers to be given to ComReg, which is very much warranted. However, there are a few issues not dealt with in the Bill that need to be addressed.

The first is an issue I have raised on numerous occasions in the House, namely, the European Commission's definition of high-speed broadband. One of the provisions in the Bill relates to universal service obligations and implementing the relevant EU directive. I will come back to that presently. The difficulty at this time is that the legal definition of high-speed broadband at EU level is a services of 30 Mbps. No one in this country believes a speed of 30 Mbps is high-speed broadband. The Commission is setting a target of gigabit broadband speeds in eight years' time, yet it still retains the legal definition of high-speed broadband as being a speed of 30 Mbps. Why is this a problem? Under EU state aid rules, National Broadband Ireland cannot intervene to provide a householder with a fibre optic cable where that home is already getting a minimum speed of 30 Mbps. Sadly, it is not the case that those households are getting a minimum of 30 Mbps but that the provider, usually Eir, is telling them they are getting that speed. I am aware of instances right across rural Ireland, on the edges of many of the towns and villages in this country, where people are not getting 30 Mbps. However, Eir is telling the Department it can provide them with that speed and because of that, and even though the fibre optic cable is on the pole outside their door, NBI is precluded from providing them with a service.

The European Commission is threatening us with legal action on broadband provision. I ask the Minister of State, at European Council level and through his engagement with the Commission, to ensure the latter starts pulling up its own socks. It needs to revise the definition of high-speed broadband. No one on this Earth believes a download speed of 30 Mbps and an upload speed of 5 Mbps amount to high-speed broadband. Why is the Commission not prepared to change its definition when it is setting a target for 2030 of 1 Gb? Ireland is probably the only country in the EU that will be able to achieve that target universally across the State but we are being precluded from doing so because the Commission will not revise its definitions. I hope the Minister of State can make progress on that.

On a related issue, something I, as Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, took up with the Commission is that there should be a legal universal service obligation in regard to the provision of high-speed broadband to homes. There is no point in the Commission talking about high-speed Internet access and giving gigabit speeds to homes if there is no legal obligation in this regard. We will be unique in Europe in having fibre going to almost every door in the country by 2030. The difficulty is we will have a handful of homes scattered in different parts of the country for which there will be an astronomical cost to the State of putting in a broadband connection. If we had a universal service obligation on the telephone providers to provide broadband to every home, that would overcome the problem. We have a legal definition at present whereby people are legally entitled to have a copper wire brought to their door in order to avail of telephone services, but they have no legal entitlement to any broadband service whatsoever. The Commission needs to move on this. It has been pussyfooting around these issues for long enough. If it is prepared to take out the big stick and wave it at Ireland, we should go back to it and say we are the ones showing Europe how this can and will be done.

We are the ones showing Europe how this can and will be done. Let them give us the opportunity to deliver on that by changing the archaic rules they have in place. They can come back closer to home. One of the provisions in this legislation relates to cybersecurity, particularly relating to 5G networks. I do not intend to get involved in that debate today; it is for another day.

However, I want to raise a related issue. We all accept that the 5G networks will need to be ubiquitous across this country if we are going to have equality of treatment for people on our island. At the moment, we are looking at it in terms of the 5G services that are provided currently. Such networks are going to be vitally important in the provision of services to farmers in rural areas, in crop and livestock management and in the provision of healthcare services. Yet, there is no obligation to provide 5G coverage on a geographic basis in this country. The disappointing aspect about this is that the Government launched its national digital strategy earlier this year on 1 February. It has set itself a bizarre target of only covering the populated areas of the country with 5G by 2030. It is going to provide fibre broadband to every rural home, 146,000 km of it to 96% of the landmass of this country, two years earlier, yet we are only setting ourselves a target of 5G coverage for populated areas by 2030. Eir is already covering 70% of the population, including 322 towns throughout the country. Three has 79% 5G population coverage at present. We are setting ourselves a very low benchmark by 2030. I accept that when we move into rural areas, the cost of it becomes prohibitive. I am asking the Minister of State to sit down with representatives of the industry and agree on the establishment of a single rural 5G network, so that all the operators can piggy-back on it and provide 5G coverage to every townland and parish in the country. It makes financial sense for the Government to do it if there is a little bit of joined-up thinking. The reason for that is the existing TETRA radio system used by An Garda Síochána and the emergency services is costing us €40 million a year. The technology is obsolete. We are going to put in a new network and spend a lot of taxpayers' money on rolling out a separate independent, geographic 5G network across the country to provide the services to our emergency services. Why not have a 5G service that people in rural communities can use, and that people in any location on this island can use to dial 112 or 999 to get access to the emergency services and the type of medical support that can now be made available on a 5G network, as well as providing it to the emergency services and An Garda Síochána? Instead of it costing €40 million a year, we could replicate what is being in done in Northern Ireland where a rural network is being rolled out. The estimated cost, according to the industry, of rolling that out in this jurisdiction would be between €30 million and €50 million in a one-off capital cost, not a recurring cost, benefiting our communities as well as benefiting the taxpayer.

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