David Norris (Independent)

I am most grateful to Senator Ó Domhnaill for so graciously allowing me to speak because otherwise I would not get a chance to contribute to this debate at all. A minute should be more than sufficient time.

As I understand it there are two principal problems. The first is geographic spread and the second is speed. I do not think they have been completely addressed by the Government despite its best efforts but it is making progress. The significant difficulty is the reliance on mobile broadband. As far as I can understand it, internationally this is regarded as satisfactory as a back-up service but not as the principal service because it does not have the adequate speed or capacity. That is a significant problem.

The Government's motion is bland in the extreme and almost invites the kind of negative response which it got. What a pity. We should all be pushing together because this is so necessary in terms of attracting international business. If the unnecessarily negative elements of condemnation had been removed from the amendment on this side of the House then I think we could have rolled the amendment and motion together in a satisfactory way and we could have all got behind the Government.

The Minister referred to telecommunications. That is the one aspect that is missing from the whole argument. I note that when a debate took place on legislation introduced by this side of the House in Private Members' time, no one but me mentioned the background. The seeds of this problem were sowed in the privatisation of Eircom——