Dick Spring
Question:122 Mr. Spring asked the Minister for Public Enterprise the reasons the town of Tralee, County Kerry was not one of the towns included in phase one of the plan to role out high speed Internet access in the regions. [10486/02]
Written Answers. - Telecommunications Services.
Under the e-commerce measure of the national development plan, 31 submissions were received under the second call for proposals by the deadline of 19 October 2002. The submissions were independently evaluated and the results of the evaluation were finalised at the beginning of this year. On foot of the evaluation, a number of local authorities have been asked to enter procurement to establish firm prices for their proposals. Once procurement is completed, subject to satisfactory pricing, contracts will be offered for the projects. It is anticipated that this will take place over the next two months. The proposals involve the construction of metro area fibre-optic networks in 19 towns. No proposal was received in respect of Tralee. Networks in other towns are under discussion with the relevant local authorities. Arising from the Government strategy which I announced on 8 March, a second phase of 48 additional towns will be pursued through a public private partnership model. Tralee is one of those towns.