Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It has already been mentioned that the importance of broadband will be compared to water infrastructure, electrification and roads. When prioritised, broadband infrastructure is now maybe as important as road infrastructure, because if we can work from home, we do not need the road to take us to work. It has critical importance. Over the last two years of the Covid pandemic, we have identified broadband as a significant need in future, because it allowed a significant proportion of our workforce to work from home.As we, the legislators, begin to discuss legislating for working from home, it is critical that nobody is left behind and that inequality does not exist because a person does not have broadband and cannot avail of working from home.

In the previous Dáil, I participated in a number of broadband debates. I think we can draw a line under that and say that whether we agree or disagree on whatever we did in regard to the roll-out of broadband, we all got a sense of relief in 2019 when, at long last, the contract was signed and we could start delivering this much-needed infrastructure. Senator Dooley and a number of others mentioned that people do not care and that they just want to know when they are going to be connected. They do not want to know that the box in the village is broadband but, sorry, they are still connected to the exchange, or when we roll out to the 300,000 homes through Eir, they are not within 50 m of that connection and, therefore, do not qualify. All of these complexities are just adding to the frustration.

In my community, I can give the exact example of that with regard to our community centre and national school, where the broadband pole was on the footpath outside the premises, yet they could not get connected. That gave the previous Government the example of what was needed. In fairness, the Government came down to St. Kevin's National School and Brockagh Resource Centre in Laragh to launch the national broadband plan. That was a hugely positive day.

The appointment of NBI was another step in the right direction but there is a level of frustration. People have said NBI is great at communicating but, sometimes, the news it is giving is not so great. I come from a rural area and have an understanding of the need for this at home and in business, and my own business was lucky to be one of those 300,000 premises that were able to connect to broadband. I registered with NBI in 2020, when people could put in their Eircode and get updates on it. The road outside my house now seems to be an interchange for NBI vans, given there are that many of them going up and down in the last 18 months. I was saying “It is getting nearer”, and we then saw the poles going in and the cables coming up to the poles. Then, in December 2021, I got an email with the update to the effect that my broadband connection will happen in December 2023, and I just said, “My God, is it that far away?”

The intention of NBI is good. It wants to roll out broadband. Where are the obstacles in this regard? Let us park Covid for a minute. Everybody had to deal with Covid, so let us not use that. How is the infrastructure relationship with Eir working and how successful is that? What is the bureaucracy behind that? Is it working and is NBI getting access to the equipment it needs? When it gets to that equipment, what condition is it in with regard to poles, ducting, cables or space within that? How much of a delay is there? On another aspect, there are still some blockages in the bureaucracy in regard to local authorities. Is that holding it up? NBI needs to get the finger out a bit more and start delivering, and not hide behind excuses.

I will conclude with positive news. It was an honour to welcome the Minister of State on his visit to Brockagh Resource Centre in my community. At the centre, he met the principal of St. Kevin's National School. Brockagh Resource Centre availed of one of the BCPs and it proved to be critical during the pandemic. The principal of the school informed the Minister of State that without that connection, the parents would not have been able to pull into the car park to download the work their children were doing. I thank the Minister of State for that intervention in our community. This is critical for the whole country moving forward. We need to remove whatever obstacles are there.