Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

I could not connect my mobile telephone to the network. I could not run Skype on the network. I could not send a single 5 Mb video file from the convention centre.

While it is useful to analyse and use international comparisons to determine what is happening in other countries and learn from them, we must remember that we have our own unique characteristics. We do not have the high density apartment schemes they have in Korea, which means we will have to come up with a different solution. We may have a competitive advantage by being more flexible and innovative than countries like Korea and Japan because we must be thus to get broadband to our population.

Denmark and the United Kingdom are examples of countries where investment by different platform operators is what is driving the high speeds and the innovative approach. It is investment by the Danish grid company — which is similar to the ESB here — in broadband which underlies development there. The investment here by the ESB in the back haul network to carry broadband has similarly paid dividends.

It is interesting that in the UK, a review by their top-level analysts on the future of broadband and next generation networks came to the clear conclusion this June that the right approach was not for the State to take a controlling interest in the development of broadband, contrary to the proposal as set out by Senator Ross here. I cite these examples of what other countries are doing to illustrate that the clear lesson to be learned is that broadband development tends to work best when there is strong competition between players that are well regulated by an independent regulatory body. The best results come from an evolutionary approach where one technological improvement on a platform drives through competition for another platform provider to improve its service and bring down its price. That is what is happening in Ireland at the present time.

In the past year and a half we have roughly doubled the number of broadband subscribers, which was the fastest rate of growth in the OECD. We have been particularly strong and fast growing in the mobile broadband sector, in the application of wireless hotspots and mobile broadband itself. We are also starting to see prices come down and speeds increase. In recent months operators have been increasing their standard packages from 2 Mb to 10 Mb or even 20 Mb. New companies are building fibre optic networks which are providing 50 Mb connectivity to the home. It is starting to happen and companies are starting to deliver.

Deputy Ross asked about the scale of investment. Certainly the State will invest where it can but the most important thing is to leverage and recognise that the private sector has the most important role to play. The telecommunications industry federation estimates that those platform providers competing against each other are now investing some €700 million per year in providing the next generation broadband network. Investment is occurring and it is our crucial role to drive that and push companies to invest further, to drive competition but not necessarily to pay the money ourselves. Why spend taxpayers' money on the development of broadband when we can get commercial interests to do it?

I stand by the fora that we organised. I found the one-day forum attended by leading experts such as the former adviser to Mr. Al Gore on the development of the Internet, CEOs of significant American and Japanese companies investing in this area, as well as former regulators to be excellent. It was absolutely right to bring together people with real expertise in this area, particularly as they had no vested interest in the economic issues of this country. Typically, those who are involved in the area here have a vested interested. That international forum brought together people with real expertise but no vested interest to express their views on where we should go from here.

I also believe we were absolutely right to hold a public forum here and to hold an on-line, social networking style forum in the consultation process on our next generation broadband paper. It is right for us to try to bring about the change that we want to see and to take on some of the open, democratic consultative processes that exist on the Internet and to apply them to our own policy analysis. I absolutely stand by those fora, which were hugely valuable and beneficial in terms of the consultative and policy processes, leading to action.

There were 150 participants in the forum, including user groups, people from an on-line network, computer companies and digital media application companies, public policy experts interested in rural divides and social exclusion, telecommunications companies and broadcasting companies. Bringing them all together into a room was a very useful way of trying to get a common understanding of the best way forward and the key actions we need to take. Having spent the day at the forum, which was one of the most useful days I have spent in Government, I got a clear sense of support for key actions the Government is now taking.

One of the reasons I will not be supporting the Bill before us is that we are in the process of delivering change and do not want to stop that in order to start again on a whole new process. The establishment of a one-stop-shop so that platform providers, on an equal access basis, can have access to ducting which we may run alongside State infrastructure, new and old — along roadways, canals, gas pipelines, availing of whatever State infrastructure we have to make sure we have the back haul network into which operators can tap — is probably one of the most crucial, beneficial interventions the State can make and one to which I am committed to bringing forward in the next year.

We will bring forward very specific proposals on how we can ensure new buildings are fit for the broadband Internet future. We will reduce the cost of retrofitting buildings by designing the correct connection into houses from the outset.