Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

With regard to remote working hubs, sometimes bureaucracy and multidisciplinary departments make it very confusing for people. I want to clearly outline something today for my colleagues after a meeting this morning with the Department of Rural and Community Development. One of its top civil servants, Dr. Stjohn O'Connor, clarified for us some of the information on remote working hubs because we had seen some announcements in the budget. Every county in Ireland has a broadband officer, which is good to know. Whether with regard to a social enterprise, a village hall, an old Garda station or a group of people who want a Wi-Fi hub in their area, people should go to their local authority and find the broadband officer. The civil servant also pointed out that they have not reached capacity with the money and there is still money available for these broadband connection points, BCPs. I have been hearing about BCPs and Wi-Fi hubs for ages and I have discovered the difference is that BCPs are in areas with absolutely no Wi-Fi whatsoever. If a village or area has no Wi-Fi, it can apply through the broadband officer in the local authority to get funding to set up a place where people can go.

Apart from my obsession with rural water schemes, I believe that rural broadband is the second key requirement for surviving and thriving in rural Ireland and having regional balance. We have heard of many people moving from big cities to rural areas where they have good rural broadband services. Everyone in Dublin will know it is so much cheaper in rural areas and instead of having rural schools and rural shops closing down, this is a real opportunity for these schools, small shops and small businesses to thrive again if we can have these rural Wi-Fi hubs. I want to draw everybody's attention today to the fact that now is the time to carpe diem. The Minister, Deputy Humphreys, is strongly in support of this issue. She put €5 million into the budget because she knows it is one of the key issues for regional rebalance. Everybody, including the Government, has always been speaking about regional rebalancing and now, because of Covid, remote working is becoming a norm forever more. We will never go back to the way it was. A total of 84% of people who have had to work remotely because of Covid have said they would happily continue to do so. I urge the entire House to support this huge investment. Let us get it all spent. Let us apply for it in every local authority area and let us get rural Ireland back on its feet again.