Shane Ross (Independent)

I move:

That Seanad Éireann deplores the failure of the Government to ensure broadband access in every home and business in Ireland.

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Tony Killeen, for being here. This is very serious issue and I raise it for the second time in 13 months, which most unusual. Broadband is one of the ignored issues of the Oireachtas. I am absolutely staggered by the lack of interest, alarm and drive of Members of the Oireachtas when confronting this problem. There is no sense of urgency about it among them and it is no coincidence that this House is not particularly full. Broadband may not be a sexy subject but it is a vital one. The attitude of successive parliamentarians is that broadband is, for some extraordinary reason, an optional extra. They regard it as something we may or may not need. This is far from the case.

Broadband is an absolutely essential part of the infrastructure of a modern state. I contend — I do not believe the Minister will disagree — broadband is something we simply cannot do without. We should be able to take it for granted by now rather than see it as an area in which we regard ourselves as perhaps a little bit behind as a nation.

An unlimited number of broadband tables are issued by the EU, the OECD and various bodies to prove one thing or another. The only common trend in them is that Ireland's performance in broadband is lamentable. In every European league table I have seen, we are very low which is extraordinary for a country which is debatably the most prosperous in Europe, or is certainly the second most prosperous one per capita. In the latest figures I received only today from the US Chamber of Commerce, Ireland is 15th out of 15 countries in the domestic broadband league table, which is appalling.

Apologists for various Governments and telecom companies say it does not really matter about the domestic sector and that they are doing a little better in the corporate sector and are looking after business. That is a very short-sighted and wrong way to present things because business broadband and domestic broadband cannot be separated. Let me explain why.

Many employees, particularly in the United States, but also in other countries, now work at home. It is a trend. They work on their own computers at home and if they do not have broadband at home, they cannot do so. Working from home is a growing trend here and overseas, particularly for employees of multinational companies. This is a nation which claims it is the champion of the knowledge economy. It is now becoming the nation with the knowledge economy but which cannot transmit the knowledge. That may work in the short term but it will not work in the long term. If people cannot get the knowledge in time, they will not be able to do the job and will not be able to work at home. What will happen is that foreign direct investment will start to dry up. That has not happened yet but there are straws in the wind that multinationals are looking at Ireland and asking about broadband.

I was at a dinner in London the other night with some ordinary Irish people who live there. They are not hi-tech, young or the modern generation but the first question I was asked after the dinner was why was broadband so bad in Ireland. The message is going out to people that we are way behind in broadband. That message will then go out to multinationals which will realise they cannot get people to work in various places because there is no broadband penetration. The result will be that we are damaged, although not ruined, as a nation for foreign direct investment. There is no doubt about that. People will look elsewhere, as they are now doing for other reasons.

Lest the Minister thinks I am being alarmist, I will quote Mr. John McElligott. I do not know if the Minister of State, Deputy Tony Killeen, is aware of this but he is meeting the senior Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, in the next few days. Mr. McElligott is the head of eBay in this country. It is a very important company in terms of hi-tech, broadband and multinationals and Mr. McElligott has done something which chief executives of most multinationals in this area will not do. He has put his head a bit above the parapet and has said some pretty alarming things in recent weeks. He wrote to Deputy John Cregan, the Chairman of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources stating:

I am writing to let you know that eBay is highly concerned about the current state of our broadband connectivity in this country. Ireland is nowhere in terms of online application usage and innovation. This is a major missed opportunity. With our wealth, US links and English language, we should rightly be an online hotbed. Instead, our connectivity is holding the country back in four important areas:

Growth of domestic internet applications and entrepreneurship

Inwards investment — Ireland should be attracting FDI for online applications as an ideal "EU test market". Currently we primarily attract 'offshore' service centres

Regional development — connectivity provides people with a real option to work from home, and to be based outside the cities

Take up of great new services that area enjoyed across the EU, such as eGovernment and VOIP

As someone working in the online space, I see firsthand the results of this disappointing situation. I am embarrassed [This is the head of a multinational.] to tell my peers in other countries about Ireland's connectivity problems. Simply put, we require a major leap in connectivity capabilities in terms of coverage, quality and speed.

He goes on to say that our broadband situation is affecting inward foreign direct investment and will continue to do so. The rest of the letter is along the same lines. We ignore that sort of warning from someone at the coalface at our peril. If we ignore that, we will see that foreign direct investment will be reduced and companies might take fright at coming to Ireland.

I also spoke to the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland, which does not regard it as something that has an immediate impact on decisions for those who are already here. In other words, I do not think it will mean that any of those with headquarters here will actually exit Ireland. However, it will act as some sort of deterrent in the future as the message goes out. The American Chamber of Commerce Ireland was worried about the message going out in a broader sense, which, in many ways, is more dangerous. This message was that Ireland is not, in the term said to me, "e-savvy". In other words, we are wonderful in terms of language and educated young people, are not great on infrastructure but are so far behind in respect of e-generation, broadband and high technology issues. It is in respect of being e-savvy that people from abroad should look at Ireland in a different light.

The Minister should listen to bodies like the Irish Internet Association and I do not understand why Ministers do not do so. I recently attended one of its meetings in the Mansion House which was attended by 400 people. They represented billions of euro in investment in Internet companies and other high-technology companies here. However, they told me that they could not even get a proper audience with Ministers who just did not listen to them. While these people are listening to representatives of IBEC and ICTU, who presumably have some role in this, although I am doubtful about it, they will not even listen to the people with the fire in their bellies who have led and are leading the economic boom. That is what worries me so much.