Michelle Mulherin (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the strides being made on the roll-out of the national broadband plan and, in particular, the fact that the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Naughten, has brought to Cabinet today firm proposals as to how it might proceed and how we might see it delivered on the ground. This needs to be driven forward and the Minister should be commended for hitting the ground running.

On the issue of broadband and jobs, I note that we have a state-of-the-art transatlantic fibre-optic cable from New York, which makes landfall at Killala, County Mayo, and goes on to connect New York with London. It is state-of-the-art in that the data and information capacity of the cable is equivalent to that of all current cables under sea or on the seabed between North America and Europe. It is significant. The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Mary Mitchell O'Connor, is anxious to implement the regional action plan for jobs to see jobs created on the ground. There is a golden opportunity with this technology.With all the capacity of this high-speed cable, one particular area on which we need to focus is data centres. We know we have an ideal climate for such centres. At the location where the cable makes landfall, a combined heat-and-power biomass plant is being developed. One key consideration for developers of data centres is that there would be a source of renewable energy close to hand because they are energy guzzlers.