Feargal Quinn (Independent)

The Chinese are so far advanced. It is a much bigger country, but consider the fact that they were so far behind us.

It is now thought that developing countries may be poised to leapfrog the industrialised world in the era of the mobile web. The number of mobile phones that can access the Internet is growing at a phenomenal rate. This is especially true in the developing world. In China, for instance, more than 73 million people or 29% of all Internet users in the country use mobile phones to go on-line. The fastest growth overall is in developing countries such as Indonesia, India, Russia and South Africa.

Mobile phones in developing countries are now used to access services to which we do not have access in Ireland or even in Europe. The Economist reports that one example of this is M-PESA, a mobile payment service which I learned about only last week at a Gorta conference in Dublin. It is a mobile payment service introduced last year by Safaricom Kenya, a mobile operator. It allows subscribers to withdraw and deposit money via Safaricom's sales agents and send funds to each other by text message. The service is now used by around a quarter of Safaricom's estimated 10 million customers. Casual workers can be paid quickly by phone, taxi drivers can be paid without having to carry cash around, and money can be sent to family and friends in emergencies. Safaricom's parent company, Vodafone, has also introduced M-PESA in Tanzania and Afghanistan and plans to offer it in India. The reason I learned about it from Gorta last week is that the agency sends help by this method to shops in Kenya and is able to help on that basis. Similar services are popular elsewhere.

We should be encouraging more people to work from home and the high-speed Internet access of broadband makes that possible. Perhaps we even need to consider so-called green tax incentives. I am afraid even to mention a tax of any sort, but I refer to an incentive. If a person need not commute to work five days a week, it reduces his or her car emissions and results in less traffic on the roads. It also links into other social benefits such as a parent being able to spend more time with his or her children and, perhaps on that basis, having lower or no child care costs. The avenue of encouraging people to work from home is ripe for exploration and broadband is essential for that to happen.

This Bill is worthy of support. The Minister should accept it but, if not, he should certainly take steps to ensure the objective of this Bill is achieved during the coming year.