Results 5,481-5,500 of 32,583 for speaker:Richard Bruton

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: National Broadband Plan: Discussion (14 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: The Deputy was, to some degree, prophetic in saying that 30 Mbps was probably too slow because the EU confirmed in 2016 that the requirement would be 100 Mbps for universal access and, as he will be aware, this will go live at 150 Mbps and has the capacity to grow to 500 Mbps in ten years. He was absolutely right. I hear most complaints and representations from people who were left...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: National Broadband Plan: Discussion (14 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: Exactly. It is the city price being applied.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: National Broadband Plan: Discussion (14 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: Yes.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: National Broadband Plan: Discussion (14 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: I will not comment on how one gets from Inis Oírr to Inis Meáin with a peer in only one location.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: National Broadband Plan: Discussion (14 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: Submissions to Government memorandums are not normally published but those to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform were published because they were submissions of a different order. They were not only submissions to a Government memorandum but they had been made in the course of all of this process. They were in a different category and that is why they were published.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: National Broadband Plan: Discussion (14 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: That is above my pay grade. I will have to check that out for the Deputy.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: National Broadband Plan: Discussion (14 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: Exactly. I agree with the Deputy's analysis that the carbon footprint will be impacted. Many progressive companies engage in significant remote working and they only do that if there is a secure fibre link. They will not do it on a wireless-based link. The Deputy is correct that if this was given to a commercial State company, there would have to be a new procurement process. One could...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: National Broadband Plan: Discussion (14 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: The company would have to rent the poles or build its own. Within two years, the contractor would be active in every single county. I understand the grid is separated into 110 zones of 5,000 each. I presume there is a certain logic based on the nodes, as the Deputy described. The MANs and Eir exchanges will be the base from which they will start. They will seek to deliver on a least...

Report of Joint Committee on Climate Action: Motion (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: I thank all Members who spoke on the motion. This is a very important debate. There is a great deal of consensus, notwithstanding very sharp differences on some issues. I am reminded of the late Brian Lenihan, who memorably stated that the only fair tax was the one that he did not have to pay. In introducing the concept of carbon pricing, there is a danger that people will want something...

Report of Joint Committee on Climate Action: Motion (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: This is an important opportunity to acknowledge the work of Deputy Hildegarde Naughton and the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action. I think the whole House has recognised that this is a really important subject. It has rightly been described as the greatest challenge facing humanity. I had the benefit of being at the conference in Poland where people from the youngest student to...

National Broadband Plan: Statements (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: Obviously the Government will have to sign the contract at the end of the day. Our legal, financial and technical experts will sit down with the company that has been appointed as the preferred bidder and go through those arrangements. A lot of work will then have to be done in setting up the contracts. We will set up a governance structure to make sure we can oversee and execute every...

National Broadband Plan: Statements (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: Does the Deputy refer to the publication of the contract? The contract will be published.

National Broadband Plan: Statements (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: I am absolutely free to make myself available. That is what I have said throughout this. I am happy to sit down with anyone and answer questions. Of course, this is a contract between the State and a private operator.

National Broadband Plan: Statements (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: I am here to convince people that this is the right approach, as I believe it is. I will go to any committee and to every highway and byway in the House to convince Deputy Murphy and others that this is the right thing to do. Of course, I only act on the permission of the Dáil. If the Dáil fails to support what is being done, that is its prerogative, as the Deputy knows. I...

National Broadband Plan: Statements (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: I was not at the recent discussions between the parties but I know that my officials briefed the other parties and Fianna Fáil. The final price could only have been clear to the House or any party much more recently. A lot of the work has been in creating a structure through which we are committing €3 billion at one level, while providing for a number of contingencies that can...

National Broadband Plan: Statements (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: We considered the option of breaking this up into smaller contracts or smaller areas. That was among the alternatives that were assessed. The detailed analysis of that option has been published. It was found that a single contract that treated the country as a unit was more cost-effective and that greater economies of scale would emerge in delivering it that way. That alternative was very...

National Broadband Plan: Statements (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: As part of a public expenditure code there is a requirement for a Department to provide a notional figure. However, we were very clear that we needed a competitive dialogue to ascertain exactly what the figure would be. No figure was included in the NDP. As I said, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform has indicated that no capital project in the NDP will be affected and that this...

National Broadband Plan: Statements (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: I thank the Deputies. I have no problem with scrutiny from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. That is its job, just as it is the job of the Oireachtas to ask challenging questions. I do not know if they set any store by the assurances of Ministers, but I can assure Members that long before I was part of this process my officials did voluminous amounts of work to evaluate the...

National Broadband Plan: Statements (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: On the second point, officials in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform proposed to recommend that €1 billion be spent. That would have reached 127,000 premises, which would have left 420,000 premises abandoned under their project. Rural Ireland would be waiting not only for the roll-out of that project but those 420,000 premises would have no prospect of getting service in...

National Broadband Plan: Statements (9 May 2019)

Richard Bruton: Look at what they said. This is the option they preferred. They also expressed the view that we should go back to what was rejected in 2014, which was to deliver fibre to just 1,100 village points, again relying on the commercial sector to go beyond that. We did not accept that this would meet the requirements for rural Ireland. On the issue of technology, we have had detailed...