Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and warmly congratulate him on his appointment. He will bring huge personal energy, ability and commitment to the role, as he is already doing. I am delighted to welcome him and to wish him well.

I consider the availability of high-speed broadband to be a major issue. At the time of the Celtic tiger, the bulk of representations received by my office related to planning. Then, sadly, for the past few years, the bulk have been about social welfare. Now, quite a percentage of the representations in my office are from people who cannot access broadband, which is indicative. Despite some of the wrong stereotyping of local political work, it is important that these things are discovered through local political work, and this point about broadband is very much what I am discovering.

High-speed broadband is crucial for students, many of whom now commute out of financial necessity and are going to colleges in Maynooth or in Dublin on coaches, and who need broadband in the evenings. Small businesses need it and, as the Minister said, it is crucial to encourage online sales, which cannot develop without broadband. The position is similar for farmers and the citizenry in general. It is a necessity, which I believe the Minister has recognised.

I personally support the Minister in his decision to use the gap funding model, although I know it goes back to private ownership after 25 or 26 years. I take the Minister's crucial point that we would in that way free up perhaps €1 billion for other expenditures, such as schools and so on, and that this will be off-balance sheet. There is no avoiding the importance of that. Delay would be unacceptable because people have a huge expectation around this. I am very pleased the Minister has introduced 170,000 further premises into the equation. My concern, which I am sure the Minister and others share, is that proper price controls will ensue when private ownership takes over fully. One must assume that this will be the case. While it will be our successors who police that, it needs to happen.

I agree with some of the earlier contributions on the need to write into the agreements a real commitment to rural areas in regard to timing and speed, and I am sure the Minister and his officials will be very vigilant in this regard. Of course, as the project unfolds and is brought on stream, more houses and small businesses will gain access to broadband. It will be a rolling programme and progress will be made incrementally, although I want to ensure that is all copperfastened. I am happy with the Minister's commitment to achieve 85% in two years, which would be good. I can identify with Senator Kieran O'Donnell on the difficulties experienced by people in his area because the same difficulties apply in my area, as well as in Roscommon and other parts of the country.We all have great expectations around the Minister's initiatives here.

To turn briefly to climate change, I am happy that we are signed up to the Paris agreement, which we have to be. The evidence is all around us. The Minister is a scientist by background and I do not propose to lecture him or anyone else in the House on the obvious case around this. It is well accepted now and there are very few who dissent.

To make a few practical points, I would like the Minister to provide for an analysis as to how far he could incentivise electric cars by way of lower taxes. How much would be saved in the process in terms of the contribution to lowering carbon emissions? It has been presented to me that there is considerable potential here and I would be happy to hear the Minister make a commitment in that regard. While we meet and continue to have targets, I would like us to take on board the reasonable proposition the IFA makes which is that the trees farmers have planted since 1990 and the REPS work they have done should be considered part of our assessment for target purposes. A great deal has been done there and there has been a great commitment. Many farms have a few very poor unarable acres which could be incentivised for forestry use, which would have a cumulative effect. There is potential there. The Minister can relate to that from his own experience and knowledge of his constituency. I note finally that there is no logic in replacing food production here, where it is fairly carbon free in terms of emissions, with food production where it would be much more expensive and carbon producing. I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach for his indulgence.