Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I listened to Senator Casey talking about a connection date of December 2023. We in Tipperary would love to get it by December 2023. The connection to my house will be is December 2024 and connections to other people's houses in the county will be in 2025 and 2026.

That said, God knows where we would be if we had followed the route advocated by others, especially the Independents who voted against this and wanted to start all over again. I hear with frustration the Independents in my county talking about the slow roll-out of broadband. We would not have even finished the tender process if we did what they suggested a number of years ago. This infrastructure will benefit this society for years to come and it will be remembered like electricity is remembered.

This is a huge opportunity for regional rural towns like Cahir, Clonmel and Tipperary town. There are many people who live in those towns who drive to Cork, Limerick and Waterford to work. In the past two years, that has not happened as much because they have been working from home because of Covid. We do not see the cars parked up on the roads just before they get to the motorways to travel to work because that has not been happening. That situation should continue. We need to increase the pace of this and make sure the opportunities are there for rural towns to prosper on the back of broadband. The knock-on effect this can give to towns like Cahir, Tipperary, Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir is unbelievable in terms of the indirect support it can give a town and the options it gives people to live in rural Ireland.

It is also a massive opportunity for Dublin. My colleague, Councillor Anna Grainger, is very passionate about and supportive of broadband for rural areas because it gives opportunities for people who live in Dublin but want to live in rural Ireland. There are many people who, through the pandemic, have chosen to move to Cork or Galway but still work for a company in Dublin. There are people I know who want to come home to my village, Grange, which is a tiny village, but work for companies in Dublin. They can do that if they have broadband. What this does is it opens up the housing market and three or four bedroom family homes for people who are looking to live in Dublin. There is a massive knock-on effect for Dublin, not just rural Ireland.