Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I am glad we have a Minister who is from rural Ireland and understands rural Ireland. We have often shared the same airwaves as him, as on Midwest Radio.I very much look forward to shadowing him in the future, as I am sure he looks forward to shadowing me. We have much in common.

One issue that has not gone away, however, in spite of the arrival of new politics is that of post offices, and I am glad the Minister has that role. At the start of the year the Minister's belief in the post office network and how it must be protected was to the fore, so today I want reassurance that his Department is working with the Department of Social Protection to ensure that no more letters are sent to social welfare recipients who currently collect payments at post offices asking for their bank details. We should be seeking to extend the services that rural post offices offer, not to reduce them by pressurising people to switch to big financial institutions. I know the Minister will agree with that. Recognising the challenges facing post office networks, we need to modernise and transform the role of the post office so that it becomes a hub for accessing public services and social protections within the community.

The post office network is an integral part of the social make-up of Ireland. It should therefore be protected and given the resources that it needs. As well as ensuring social protection payments continue to be processed through the post office, other sources of revenue, such as Government payments and banking, could be identified for the post office network. Furthermore, more and more services are moving online and being offered through e-Government, which certainly produces efficiencies but is serving to marginalise a whole cohort of people living in rural areas, particularly elderly people and people who do not have broadband. These people are being excluded and deprived of many essential Government services, and the post offices could play a key role here. It is often very difficult to speak to a human being on the end of a line. It can become very confusing for older people when they are trying to access a service and they are put from A to B to C to D. If those services could be offered through post offices, where somebody could go in and speak to a human being, that would be a major advancement for rural Ireland. Will the Minister therefore consider the extension of services that can be delivered at post offices and for local communities and examine the role that they need to play in addressing inequality of access to essential services?

The issue of broadband, which has been spoken about, is a very important one to rural Ireland, especially in my county of Mayo. The obvious impact upon businesses and homes of having access to fast communication is important. Just as tangible, though, is a feeling among people that this issue is not being taken seriously by the Government. People in the west especially feel that various services have been rolled out in a way that suggests that these people do not matter, which they find hard to believe. Broadband is essential not only for business, but also for many projects which can extend essential services to isolated rural areas. One example of this is the Scottish community hospital health model, which I spoke about here a few weeks ago, which relies on broadband to deliver certain services through equipment that is linked up to hubs through high-speed connections. Again, this is vital for addressing access to health services within communities. For instance, we have a super X-ray machine in Belmullet Hospital but it cannot be used, and we could be using it. It has been funded by the diaspora and members of the community. We could use it if we had broadband and proper high-speed connections to do that. The national rural development programme and the Leader programme are coming on board as well, which will create opportunities for job creation and enterprise, but that cannot be done without the necessary broadband speeds either.

I am also very concerned about the plan to privatise the broadband network in the long run. At the start of the year the Minister, Deputy Naughten, was himself opposed to the privatisation plan. We in Sinn Féin would go back even further to argue against the privatisation of Eircom, and the Minister knows the folly of that. Sometimes I question do we really learn from such matters. Telecommunications and the network was mentioned. Mobile telephone coverage is appalling. The Minister referred to having a report and an examination of the areas of poor coverage. There is no need to do that. In his role he should be forcing the telecommunications companies to address the problems where they know exactly where they are, what they are and what is causing them in many instances, like masts falling down and being left unattended and so on. There are things that need to be done and actions that need to be taken.

I note the admission of Fianna Fáil's Deputy Timmy Dooley that privatisation was wrong and that we are still experiencing the consequences of it, so there is broad consensus on that aspect. I question the Minister's actions on broadband and the cost-benefit analysis that was done. Variables are being used to come up with a specific result in doing the cost-benefit analysis. I am very concerned about the power of the auditors, the likes of KPMG, PwC, Ernst & Young and many more organisations. They seem to have control over the decision-making of this Government. I question that decision-making because we have evidence that they played a key role in the banking crisis and the whole collapse of the economy, not only in Ireland but also in the rest of Europe and worldwide. For them now to be making decisions about broadband and rural Ireland does not sit right with me.

I also ask the Minister if fibre, rather than copper, lines will be guaranteed to people's homes as part of the plan because many people who live off roads are concerned that the fibre cable will only go as far as the main road and the existing copper wire, which leads from the road to the house, will result in slower download speeds. Furthermore, the threshold of 30 Mbps as the initial standard is too low. We should be future-proofing this. This is not even about future-proofing; it is what is required now to download maps and various other graphics that are needed in the day-to-day running of a small business. Take, for instance, even an agricultural advisor or consultant who would need to download maps and other things. He would need more than 30 Mbps, so-----