Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Like many others who hail from rural Ireland or represent rural communities, I have mixed feelings about what is going on. On the one hand, after decades of announcements and broken promises, we should just get on with it and start to deliver a quality broadband network to rural Ireland. I believe the majority of the electorate in rural areas feel this way. On the other hand, it is difficult to overlook the huge cloud. The Government has boxed people living in rural Ireland into a corner. It is like asking which illness would someone prefer to have. The cost of €3 billion is 14 times the entire allocation Ireland will receive in 2019 from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development which amounts to €220 million, which is the same amount Granahan McCourt will invest in the entire project.

In a way, this controversy illustrates everything that is wrong in Irish politics. We have the usual ingredients of a national infrastructural project beset by delays and paralysis at political level; a Government that seems to be more interested in spin and electoral considerations than in achieving good policy outcomes for taxpayers; and Opposition parties that, I have to say, huff and puff to achieve their own electoral ends but that have absolutely no intention of voting down, cancelling or doing anything that might make them unpopular. We could apply these three rules of thumb to virtually every plan announced over the lifetime of the Government. If this is new politics, we should have none of it.

The earliest reference I could find to the need for a national broadband network in the Official Report for the Dáil and the Seanad was back in 2001, or 18 years ago. To paraphrase Charles Dickens in Bleak House, children have been born and grown into adulthood in the time it has taken the political system to even sign contracts for the provision of such a network. The national broadband plan announced by the Minister last week was the sixth such major plan announced by the Government in that time. It is difficult, therefore, not to be cynical about its approach. After years of delay and three years into its term, the Government is insulting the intelligence of every taxpayer when it states announcing the plan in the middle of local and European election campaigns is anything other than a vote getting exercise.

Three simple facts were known to the Government in advance of the announcement. The first is the terms of the strategy appeared to be very favourable to the preferred bidder, Granahan McCourt. The second is Granahan McCourt was to contribute a very small amount in meeting the overall capital cost, now known to be €220 million. Why was there such reluctance to speak about what the investor was to put in? I would have thought once the taxpayer was putting in a cent, all information would be on the table. The third fact is serious concerns were being expressed at a high level in the Civil Service about the achievement of value for money. However strongly we feel about the need for a rural broadband network, this is something that has to be taken very seriously.

These facts were all guaranteed to emerge sooner rather than later and made it certain that the plan would be controversial. If it was any other issue, the Government would not have touched it with a barge pole during an election campaign, but safe in the knowledge that there is an urgent need for broadband and a huge demand for the plan and that it would be well received, for electoral reasons it chose to ignore the huge issues and problems and proceed with the announcement. It would have made sense for the plan to be announced after the upcoming elections, when the details could be debated and discussed in a more calm and rational environment. That would have done justice to the homes and businesses that have been waiting 15 years for progress, instead of insulting people's intelligence and treating them like patsies.

The biggest issue with the plan appears to be that ownership of the asset, essentially the critical fibre-optic wires, will transfer into the hands of a private sector entity after 25 years. Senator Craughwell has spoken eloquently about this issue. The justification for it is that it will be of little value to the State after 25 years and that at that point the private sector is more likely than the State to invest in it. I accept that KPMG states this model provides the best value for money, but I find it difficult to believe. Could the same point not be made about the road network or the rail network? They also need to be renewed and upgraded after a period of years and the solution is never to transfer their ownership lock, stock and barrel into private hands. Instead, the State invests more money in upgrades over time. Why does the same not apply to the broadband network? It seems more likely that the Government is essentially being corralled into doing this by virtue of the fact that the tenders from Eir and SIRO, the joint venture between the ESB and Vodafone, were withdrawn. With Granahan McCourt remaining as the only bidder, it has, unsurprisingly, led to it assuming relatively little risk but all of the reward. For the umpteenth time, we get the impression that the taxpayer has been short-changed.

Correspondence from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform makes for extraordinary reading. The trenchant criticism of leading civil servants of the cost benefit analysis is very serious. There is also the most extraordinary revelation that there had been a €1 billion overestimate of the costs arising for the operation of the network, as well as a €1 billion overestimate of the benefits flowing from the contract. This only emerged in the past three months as a result of a PwC audit. This fact alone should surely have given cause for thought.

At the end of the day, I have to say people living in rural Ireland have waited long enough for the project to begin. There are towns and villages throughout the west, in particular, that are crying out for it. During our debate a number of months ago on the regulation of gambling I mentioned that the one business that seemed to be thriving in every town was the local betting shop. It is high time to do everything we possibly can to make sure other businesses with a greater social utility will have every opportunity to thrive also. Broadband forms part of it. While I accept that we cannot delay, we could certainly have delayed until after the elections to make the announcement.

I am gravely worried that we will be sitting here in 20 years's time regretting implementing the plan, as it stands. It is now widely accepted that we would not be where we are on the broadband issue if a previous Government had not made the disastrous decision to privatise Telecom Éireann in 1999. I have spoken several times about the disaster that is the handling of the national children's hospital project, a decision that will perhaps cost the State more than €2 billion and may end up costing children's lives. A large number of experts believe it is simply located in the wrong place and that it is not just a matter of money. I hope we will not end up ruing the decision to proceed with this project as planned and that we can finally deliver to people living in the west and elsewhere in rural Ireland the connectivity they badly need. I do not believe history will be kind to the Government for the way it has handled this issue.