We will move on to Deputy Bríd Smith's next question but I ask her to forfeit her initial 30 seconds and call on the Minister to respond immediately.
Tuesday, 18 September 2018
Questions (52)
Oral answers (10 contributions)
Am I being asked to forfeit my 30 seconds?
If you do so, we will be able to take your supplementary question. Otherwise-----
Am I being asked to do so or is the Leas-Cheann Comhairle assuming it? I have no problem with the request.
-----I can bring the questions to an end. I am only being helpful.
Bríd Smith
Question:52. Deputy Bríd Smith asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the way in which the national broadband plan will meet its targets; if there have been changes to the costs of the plan from when it was first announced; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37617/18]
View answer
The target of the national broadband plan, NBP, is to bring a high-speed broadband connection to every single premises in Ireland as effectively and efficiently as possible. This means no home, business, school or community is left without access to high-speed broadband. This is being achieved in two ways, through investment by commercial operators and, where this will not deliver, through a State intervention. Commercial investment has totalled €2.75 billion over the past five years. This means that today more than 15 out of 20 premises have access to high-speed broadband commercially. Without the catalysing effect of the national broadband plan this would simply not be the case. My Department is in a formal procurement process to select a company that will roll out a new high-speed broadband network in the State intervention area.
I am pleased to inform the House and, more importantly, the 540,000 families and businesses that are awaiting high-speed broadband across the country, that today marks a historic milestone for the Government's national broadband plan. Earlier today, the remaining bidder in the national broadband plan procurement process submitted its final tender to my Department. Over the coming weeks, the Department's procurement team will evaluate the submission received today. I am looking forward to receiving the output from that particular evaluation.
I am here just over two years and, in those two years, time after time the Minister has come in here to eulogise the privatisation of broadband. I almost feel sorry for him that by now he is probably choking on his words. He repeatedly says what a wonderful plan this is and what it is going to do for the country. Bidder after bidder has fallen aside but the Minister still comes in here to justify the privatisation of broadband. We are now on the hook to the remaining bidder. The Minister will not tell us who it is or how much it is costing but we will find out soon enough when the decision is actually made.
Will the procurement team that is looking at this bid be in a position to say "no"? If it says "no", where then does the Minister go? Is there any possibility that we could keep in public hands even a fraction of this service? The root of all this lies at the original decision by Fianna Fáil to privatise Telecom Éireann, and we all know what a disaster that was. The Minister is eulogising privatisation when it is made clear time after time that just getting rid of important national infrastructure like this is a mistake. Can the Minister say "no" to the current procurement bidder if that is a decision that his procurement team could make?
Could we realistically see any attempt by the State to hold on to some of this important national infrastructure?
The procurement team will evaluate the tender. It is up to the team to come up with a recommendation. We have received the final tender from the bidder. This must be assessed and evaluated by the 80-strong team that has been involved in this very complex process since the end of 2016. It has been frustratingly slow, particularly for the 543,000 families across rural Ireland and businesses that have been waiting on this. This is something to which I have been personally committed for a long number of years. I want to see this fulfilled to give people access to a basic piece of infrastructure that everyone should have as a right.
I recently heard the Taoiseach eulogise the Land Development Agency, comparing it to the electrification of Ireland, a comparison I often use when I talk to the Minister about broadband. I think that is a joke but I also think it is such a shame that we privatised broadband. It will go down in history as one of the worst decisions this Government has made. Of course, I welcome and look forward to those 450,000 homes and businesses getting access to high-speed broadband. They have been promised it for years and it is about time they got it. However, I believe that this is a disastrous decision and that the Minister has been made a bit of an eejit by all these bidders who dropped out one after the other and left the Minister to come in here to try to justify what is going on. When we do find out who the bidder is and how much it has cost, we will see whether the Minister can ever justify what has happened to our national broadband infrastructure.
The assessment of the tender that has been submitted will now take place. I await the report on that from the procurement team. A process must be completed and this process will proceed.
Written Answers are published on the Oireachtas website.