Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have the honour of being in charge of the largest capital programme in the State, namely, the national broadband plan, which is bringing fibre broadband to every home, farm and business in rural Ireland. How is the project doing? An extra €136 million has been allocated for this year. Why do I have that extra money? I have it because that project is going at a much faster rate this year than it was last year, and it is anticipated to continue at that rate. At the current rate, part way through next year we will have connected the majority of premises in rural Ireland. We know how important that is because the determining factor in selling a property in rural Ireland now is whether it has fibre broadband because that is what determines whether a person can earn the money to pay the mortgage. It is creating jobs in villages and towns around the country and revitalising them in a way that was not expected.

I had the pleasure of cycling the Ring of Kerry. I went through Killarney National Park. At the west side of the park, I cycled through the Black Valley. The latter is famous for being the last place in Ireland to be reached by rural electrification. The national broadband plan is like rural electrification, except that it does not take 50 years; it takes seven. In the Black Valley, we are bringing fibre broadband to nearly every home, or something of equivalent standard, and that will be there by July next. I see the Deputy who represents Kilgarvan and the broader Kerry area facing me here in the Chamber. I say that the Kilgarvan deployment area will be completed by December. The national broadband plan is going full speed and is coming in under budget and on time.

On cybersecurity, we all know that there was a big attack on the HSE two years ago. Since then, the cybersecurity team has been doubled in size. It has new headquarters, which it will be moving into at the end of the year, and has successfully defended against more than 2,000 attacks, including a potential attack on the Coombe Hospital that did not materialise. The maternity hospital is doing well. There was also an attack on the Irish Embassy in Kyiv.

Next, I want to talk about the circular economy. For many years in towns and villages all around Ireland there were illegal dumps and landfills. One of the most egregious, shocking and blatant of these was in Kerdiffstown in Kildare where there was a vast pile of rubbish being added to all of the time as if there would be no sanction for this. It was being done with impunity. Well, there was a punishment. The person who is responsible for that environmental crime is now in prison. I was allocating money tens of millions of euro every year to remediate those sites. Much of this funding was going to Kerdiffstown. It has now been remediated and turned into a public park. I am looking forward to going down, if I am invited, to the opening of the park. I am glad that is happening. Because we have remediated so many landfill sites; we have managed to reduce the budget we have for this.

However, also in that same division of the circular economy, by 1 February of next year, we are rolling out the deposit return scheme. That means that we will see a machine in every supermarket in Ireland where one can bring back one’s bottles and cans and get money back on them, in the same way that our parents and grandparents generation were able to return their bottles and get money back on them. This will help to reduce the 1.9 billion bottles and cans, many of which end up on the ground as litter. I expect that over 90% of them will be returned and will provide clean streams for recycling.

We are bringing in free electricity credits this year, one before and two after Christmas, of €150 each. The credits will be slightly different this year. We worked on this over the past six months with the Department and with great help from the civil servants there to ensure that this is targeted in order that people whose homes are vacant will not receive the credit and that those who slipped through the cracks the last time, such as those living in mobile homes, some Travellers and some people with disabilities, will be reached. The scheme will be fairer than it was before because it will reach people who were previously unfairly excluded and will exclude those with vacant properties who were unfairly included.

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