Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senators for their contributions, which were, as ever, interesting and insightful. Senator Garvey welcomed the delivery of a universal service obligation. As she said, there is one for landline telephones.This is now an evolution of this whereby everybody in the country will be entitled to a broadband connection at a minimum speed for an affordable price. It will be more complex to regulate this because we have more than one telecoms operator, unlike in the old days, where there was just one company.

Senator Garvey asked about broadband in County Clare and how long it will take, and, specifically, what the roll-out time is. This is a seven-year project that started in 2020 and concludes at the end of 2026. We have completed three years, so we have another four years to go. I understand this cannot come soon enough for people who are scheduled to be connected in years six and seven. Some of them may need stopgap solutions in the meantime. Two large areas in Clare have been connected. The next area that is due for connection is around Corofin, which has 2,762 premises and will be connected next year. In the meantime, the stopgap solution we are offering is that we have more than 800 connection points, which are hubs or places around the country, perhaps it can be a local community centre or GAA club, that one can go to and get a Wi-Fi connection and do some work. I was also asked about the development of those in the future. Senator Garvey suggested putting solar panels on them. I am looking to put solar panels on just about every public building we can find and, therefore, we will consider hubs as part of that. We will also connect them all to fibre within the next couple of years, so they will all be upgraded because they mostly have wireless connections. We may boost the power of the Wi-Fi service they are providing to people. We will see what we can do to expand them.

Every school in the country should have broadband by the end of June of this year. All secondary schools have been connected, of course, and some primary schools are remaining. More than 600 schools are connected.

Senator Craughwell said we cannot 100% protect ourselves from cyberattack, which is true. He described how he was a victim of a phishing attack. The truth is that it can happen to all of us. It is not a sign that there is anything wrong with us or we are stupid if we get scammed. We are constantly being assailed with these types of attacks on the Internet. I have been working with ComReg to make a number of changes to the communications networks to reduce the level of scams, which have gone down since the pandemic, when there was an epidemic of phishing and smishing attacks.

Senator Craughwell also asked about the possibility of having some kind of director of intelligence service that oversees all the intelligence agencies in the State. The State has two intelligence agencies - one is under the Garda and one is under the Department of Defence. They are co-ordinated along with the National Cyber Security Centre, which is a civilian operation. Those three arms of national security are co-ordinated by the National Security Analysis Centre, which is a small unit in the Department of the Taoiseach. We have a co-ordination function. I am flattered that Senator Craughwell thinks that I should be in charge of it but I am not planning that.

Senator Dooley asked the reason for the delay in the transposition of this directive. Normally, directives are transposed through secondary legislation. In this case, the Attorney General advised us that we must do it through primary legislation. It provides for an alternative dispute resolution process that has to fit within the prescriptions of the Constitution on how our judicial system works. We have to make sure that it is compatible with our existing court and, therefore, we require primary legislation to implement it and that is why we are doing it now.

I was also asked how long the dissolution of the DHDA will take. I am tabling a Bill that I will present before the House of the Oireachtas this year. The purpose of this dissolution is to provide space for the LDA to build housing in the city centre. The location is second to none. It is right in the middle of town and in an area that needs more housing. I will talk to the LDA about that. In fact, I visited Guinness and saw its plans for housing development and regeneration, which are more advanced than the LDA’s plans, on the other side of Thomas Street. There will be a lot of housing in the Guinness complex in the future.

Senator Dooley asked whether there should be a universal service obligation for broadband. Senator Carrigy pointed out that he himself is a postmaster. There is a postmaster as well in the Dáil. He has unique experience of the post offices and acknowledges that the money that will be provided through this Act will help with the sustainability of post offices. A number of Senators asked how we can provide more services to the post office network to make it a more sustainable network. We can provide more government services through it. I notice that the post office can do two things very well. It can identify people, that is, authenticate people’s identity, and handle cash transactions in and out. They are not suitable venues for getting involved in complex dealings with the State that require a long time, such as 20 or 30 minutes to go through. However, if someone needs to prove his or her identity, renew an identity card of some type or make a payment to or receive a payment from the State, they are ideal for that. That is where the future of more services are. An Post offers a wide range of services. It is an innovative company overall. In general, it is offering a lot. What has happened a lot with the post office development is that they are colocating in larger shops and managing to provide a more sustainable model that way.

I welcome Sinn Féin's support for the Bill. Senator Boylan mentioned an interesting issue, which is the risk of not being able to contact the emergency services during a power outage. One of the great aspects of copper telephone lines is that they provide a tiny bit of electricity that is enough to make a phone call when the power goes down. The telephone company was always very proud that it continued to work when everything else was broken. If we are not careful, we will lose that with fibre. We are heading towards a point, which is the copper switch-off. It will be hard to justify providing a copper connection and a fibre connection to every house in the country. Copper will have to go for economic and environmental reasons eventually . However, there has to be a way to still contact the emergency services or make a phone call at the time someone needs to. When a trial of copper switch-off was carried out in the UK, there was a prolonged power cut in the area where they tried it and there was difficulty reaching the emergency services. That has to be borne in mind. Another issue to bear in mind is that optical fibre does not require an electric current. The light is put in one end and it comes out the other. It is not a powered infrastructure. There needs to be some type of power to process the light in every home, and that will require a battery. The question is how to manage that. It is certainly a challenge. We will not rush into disconnecting people from vital services. Many things that perhaps people do not think of, such as emergency buttons that people have around their neck, rely on a copper connection to make the connection at the end. In addition, elevators, cash registers and all kinds of things run on copper at the moment.

Senator Boylan also asked the ramifications for local businesses if they are asked to remove equipment from their network at short notice. She made the point that they should not face a cliff edge and be put into an unfair situation. I see where she is coming from on that and we will be careful in the application of this legislation.