Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

I join my colleagues in welcoming the Minister, Deputy Ryan. I appreciate his interaction with this House. I congratulate my colleagues in the Labour Party on the quality and appropriateness of this motion and its exposition. I await with interest the outcome of Senator Hannigan's survey for which I applaud him. I hope we will learn lessons from it when it is published.

Over the years, the Government's engagement with broadband and new generation broadband, and its delivery of such services in rural Ireland has been marked by a certain tardiness. It took the Government a long time to become fully aware of the importance of broadband. I am not sure whether it has fully dawned on the Government to this day. Broadband and new generation broadband are significant if we are to develop small and medium-sized enterprises and encourage people to settle in rural Ireland. Many people take access to forms of modern technology, including broadband, into consideration when they are deciding where to live. Quality of life issues, such as access to distance learning, are also important in this context. Broadband access is vital if people are to be able to avail of goods and services and market their own goods and services. The Government's tardiness in developing its awareness of the importance of broadband services was matched by its tardiness in delivering them. I will discuss that further later. There has been a difficulty in this regard.

The ability to avail of and afford broadband services is a big issue in rural Ireland, as it is everywhere else. By comparison with other EU member states, Ireland's level of broadband take-up is below average. Investment is important if that pattern is to be reversed. I welcome the Minister's decision to raise this matter at EU level, to which he alluded in his contribution. However, we are often slow to take such action. There is a precedent for positive investment in broadband services in rural communities. The European Commission recently authorised state funding of £3.4 million towards the delivery of broadband services in remote areas of Scotland. There has also been significant investment in the delivery of broadband in rural parts of Brittany. Rural communities in the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg have benefitted from similarly positive investment. The Commission's study of urban-rural variations in member states found that in Denmark and Luxembourg, fixed broadband networks have 100% coverage among the population. In Germany, 88% of the rural population enjoys full broadband coverage. It is clear that the well-developed economic powerhouses of Europe, three of which I have mentioned, have high levels of broadband delivery, including in rural areas. A report published by Forfás in December 2008 stated that addressing the regional differences in respect of broadband is one of the keys to economic growth and development. It emphasised that a wider range of higher-speed broadband services is needed.

While I welcome the national broadband scheme, the Minister will accept that the proposed date by which blanket coverage of the country will be achieved keeps being pushed out. The date currently being spoken of is December 2010. That is why I have said that everything the Government does in relation to broadband is tardy, slow and reactive rather than proactive. I suggest that the final date will be significantly later than December 2010. Senator Hannigan, in his excellent proposition of this motion, mentioned Irish Rural Link's argument that 12,000 houses are not covered by the broadband network. I accept the Minister acknowledged that point and promised to act on it. I suggest that should be done urgently. The Government is playing catch-up. Broadband services are of great importance to all aspects of this country's economic development, including cottage industries, home industries and the entire regeneration of rural Ireland. This cannot be stated sufficiently. It is a critical piece of infrastructure that we needed to be working on much sooner. Better late than never, however, and I welcome some of the initiatives to be taken. It is, nonetheless, very serious that there are 12,000 houses and businesses that cannot be accessed, even under the national broadband scheme, and this needs to be addressed. It is important for job creation etc.

We in Fine Gael propose an economic recovery agency that will establish a new "Broadband 21" company to invest €2.5 billion in ducting and fibre optic cable, amalgamating and building on the diverse infrastructure that already exists under the ownership of Eircom, Bord Gáis, the National Roads Authority, the ESB and the MANs. It is envisaged that all this should be incorporated and worked on in a co-ordinated fashion.

Eircom, I believe, needs support, as is clear in retrospect. None of us is without some blame in this matter. What happened with the privatisation of Telecom was clearly wrong, although it was a Government decision at the time. In retrospect, the decision to sell it off must rate very high on the league table of chronic or bad decisions. The Minister has promised that everyone in the country would have the capacity to receive broadband, but this is delayed, and as always this is regrettable.

In the last phase of MANs €80 million was spent. While today's announcement is welcome it has been a very slow process to arrive at a management system that would make MANs operational in that there is a large number of towns in the country with MANs infrastructure that is not functioning. That will be corrected, however, as a consequence of today's announcement and I welcome that.

I congratulate my colleague, Councillor David Blake, in Kingscourt, County Cavan, who has been pioneering this whole area, speaking about it locally and raising consciousness to the effect that MANs is not operational in that area, although it is installed there. I commend Councillor Blake on that work and draw the Minister's attention to the research he has done in this regard and for Carrickmacross.

While we welcome the positive aspect of what is happening today, we regret the tardiness of developing awareness and action and hope that a programme of action will now take place. I am very happy to support the motion. We cannot talk about this often enough. Traditionally, we have been conditioned to think of economic development just in terms of physical infrastructure. All that is important in terms of roads etc., but broadband is key infrastructure for creating and keeping jobs. Why should there be an apartheid system in this country between urban and rural around the broadband issue? That is wrong and it needs to be corrected immediately.