Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and the officials to the Chamber. We have boots on the ground. That is a positive story about the national broadband plan. I spent five years in the last Seanad sitting on a committee and saw officials working hard to get this contract up and running. I went on public media to promote it when many parties were doing their best to talk it down, to say it was a waste of money, that it was inappropriate and that it was too expensive. These people are now saying it is not being rolled out fast enough. An awful lot of work has been done, we have boots on the ground, and the roll-out is happening. That has to be acknowledged. The amount of work the Department and officials have done has to be acknowledged in this Chamber too. This is a really good news story. We have men and women on the road fitting high-speed broadband for premises. This is what we said we would do and we have got it up and running.

This has benefits, whether it is e-farming, e-commerce or e-education. All can be involved in these now because of the roll-out of the national broadband plan. The biggest problem we will have in five years is that the people of rural Ireland will not have broadband of the same speed. That will be the biggest problem in ten years too. We have been talking to people living in urban areas who have said their neighbour three miles down the road has much faster broadband than their own. That will be the real issue. The problem with this proposal is that it is going to be too successful, and because it will be too successful, urban Ireland will look for a service at the same speed.