Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 14 May 2015
216. Deputy Brendan Griffin asked the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources his views on the designation of e-towns for persons who work from home to come and live in, because of the availability of super-fast broadband; if he sees potential to attract high spending residents to towns, particularly depressed rural towns; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19039/15]
View answerThe Government strongly supports the importance of high quality Broadband connectivity for long term economic and social sustainability.
The National Broadband Plan is delivering high speed broadband to every home and business in Ireland regardless of its location. This is being achieved through a partnership between Government and commercial telecommunications companies.
The commercial telecommunications sector is currently investing approximately €2.5 billion in network upgrades and enhanced services with approximately 1.6 million of the 2.3 million premises in Ireland expected to have access to commercial high speed broadband services over the next two years. Approximately 1.1m homes and businesses already have access to such services. These very significant investments represent a step-change in the quality of broadband services available.
The Government is committed to ensuring that those premises located in areas outside the commercial investment footprint will also have access to the same quality of services. The availability of such services will enable citizens and businesses to access a wide range of new services, including the capacity to work from home and the ability to innovate with existing and new businesses. Experience from the Department's Trading Online programme shows that using the internet to sell goods and services has a positive impact on businesses. The considerable commercial broadband investment under the National Broadband Plan is therefore already helping to reinvigorate towns across Ireland.
Last November I published a national high speed coverage map for 2016. This map is available at www.broadband.gov.ie. The map shows Ireland with two colours, BLUE and AMBER.
The areas marked BLUE represent those areas that will have access to commercial high speed broadband services by end 2016. The Amber areas represent those parts of the country where commercial operators deem it unviable to invest. All premises within the Amber area will be included in the State's intervention.
Through this combination of significant private and public investment, the Government is confident that the broadband connectivity challenge, particularly in the more rural parts of the country, will be definitively addressed.
