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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 7 Feb 2018

Vol. 965 No. 2

National Broadband Procurement Process: Statements

The Minister, Deputy Naughten, has ten minutes.

Last night’s debate again made it clear that we are all united in our desire to ensure that high-speed broadband is delivered throughout Ireland as soon as possible. Deputies highlighted the impacts of not having high speed broadband on people throughout rural Ireland. As I said last night, I understand and share this frustration because my neighbours, family and friends are experiencing the exact same problems every single day.

I believe that high-speed broadband is a basic necessity for families and businesses throughout Ireland, in cities, in towns, in villages and in rural areas, just as electricity and water was in the last century. That is why delivering high-speed broadband to every home, every business, every farm and every school in Ireland is a personal commitment from me and remains a key priority of the Government.

I would like to address some of the points raised in the debate last night. The national broadband plan, NBP, is not just about the State intervention and the associated procurement process. The plan was designed to be a combination of commercial and State investment. That has been the clear intention from the start and that is why commercial investment of €2 million is continuing to deliver improved broadband services every single day. The increased level of investment by commercial operators has certainly been influenced by the commitments outlined in the national broadband plan.

The level of commercial investment in deploying high-speed broadband to all regions, towns and villages across Ireland is stimulated by the national broadband plan. That is part of the overall package and has been publicly acknowledged by technology commentators.

A number of Deputies made reference last night to the eir 300,000 project and the commitment agreement relating to that roll-out. There seems to be some misunderstanding about why the map for the national broadband plan State intervention area was revised to remove the premises within the Eir 300,000. The national broadband plan State intervention is a state-aided project and one of the fundamental principles under state aid guidelines is that state aid for high-speed broadband services should be granted only in respect of areas where market failure has been identified. Therefore, only where private investment does not deliver or does not have concrete plans to do so in the near future should state aid be used.

My Department had no involvement in the selection of premises for inclusion in this commercial roll-out. That was entirely a decision for Eir, as it would be for any other commercial company. Following examination of the commercial plans submitted by Eir, I entered into a commitment agreement in respect of the Eir 300,000 roll-out.

While the state aid guidelines envisage clear milestones being set out in commercial plans, the commitment agreement I delivered considerably exceeded those guidelines in that it included not only milestones for delivery but also robust monitoring and enforcement provisions.

I hope it is now clear to the House that it is not a case that the commitment agreement in some way determined where Eir’s high-speed broadband infrastructure was to be built. That is always a matter for commercial companies. The commitment agreement provided a very strong assurance that planned infrastructure would be built and the commitment agreement set out clearly the quarterly milestones to be achieved.

If the intervention area was not reduced to reflect the Eir commercial roll-out, there would have been a very real risk that the State would have been in breach of state aid guidelines. Such a breach would have resulted in Ireland not receiving approval for state aid and potentially mean that the contract could not be awarded. It was the emergence of concrete commercial plans from eir that led to the need to reduce the intervention area, not the commitment agreement.

Deputy Dooley said last night that his proposed independent review could be concluded in two months and I explained that this was an entirely unrealistic expectation. It is now being suggested that a review could run in parallel to the current procurement process. That, too, is totally unrealistic and suggests either a naivety or that the NBP is being used as a political football. The conduct of a parallel review would significantly impact on the procurement team's ability to engage effectively with the bidder in dialoguing the final issues for resolution. The exercise would introduce uncertainty to the process and legitimately the bidder could decide to disengage from the process until the review was concluded. In any event, I reject the suggestion that there is any basis for carrying out a review.

The Government in its counter motion last night recognised the significant uncertainty that would be created by embarking on an unnecessary review at this late stage of the procurement process and recognised that this could undermine and indeed collapse the procurement process. Putting the procurement off course at this key stage would seriously jeopardise the achievement of the objectives of the NBP and would in fact thwart the will of Dáil Éireann and the Irish people, which is to make high speed broadband available throughout rural Ireland.

I recognise the time that has elapsed since the NBP was first mooted. I understand the impatience of those who are waiting on the NBP to bring high-speed broadband to their communities, but now we are in the final stages of the procurement process that can deliver high-speed broadband to those communities. Now is the time for strong and steady resolve to see the procurement process through to a conclusion. That is why we should continue apace with the public procurement process to select a company to build a future proofed high-speed broadband network in those areas, in every county in Ireland, which will not be served by commercial operators.

Members of the Opposition have decried the delay in delivering high-speed broadband time and time again. Delivery of this vital service is too important to be treated as a political football.

I would like to conclude by confirming that no decision will be made on the award of the NBP contract without the consent of the Government and it is my intention to keep this House and its Members regularly updated on progress in delivering the objectives of the national broadband plan, as I have done to date both formally and informally.

As I said during last night’s debate, when I became Minister 21 months ago, five out of ten premises had access to high-speed broadband. Today, that is closer to seven out of ten premises. By the end of the year, I expect that to rise to eight out of ten premises and, by 2020, nine out of ten premises will have access to high-speed broadband. By the end of this year, 79% of the population, 87% of schools and 96% of business parks will have access to high-speed broadband.

In summary of progress to date, in the past 12 months alone new telecommunications infrastructure has been delivered to over 280,000 premises providing high-speed broadband with services up to 1 Gbit per second download speeds.

The 300,000 roll-out alone will deliver high-speed broadband to 810,000 people, one third of farms and over 1,000 schools. It is also important to remember the ongoing efforts being made to ensure delivery of the national broadband plan.

In July 2016, I established the Mobile Phone and Broadband Taskforce as part of A Programme for a Partnership Government, whose role is to identify solutions to obstacles faced by the roll out of the national broadband plan and to facilitate the faster delivery of mobile and wireless broadband solutions across rural Ireland.

I am planning to release shortly the task force's annual report, which details the progress made to date. Every local authority now has a dedicated broadband officer acting as a single point of contact for operators on coverage and roll-out issues and there is considerable co-operation between local authorities, operators and across Departments, including my own Department.

I have endeavoured to ensure maximum openness and transparency for Members of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann and the public regarding the NBP procurement process while respecting the need to protect its integrity. I took the initiative to arrange special information sessions for Deputies and Senators on the NBP on three occasions in the past ten months. I held an information session last April when the map for the procurement process was finalised. I held a further information session for Deputies and Senators last September when the procurement reached the detailed solutions stage. Last week, I held a further information session to provide an update following the withdrawal of eir from the procurement process and, last night, I supplied each Deputy and Senator with a copy of the letter I received from Richard Moat informing me of this decision. I also supplied Members with copies of my response. This evening, ahead of these statements, Members received an updated, comprehensive briefing document from me.

This week I have contributed openly and positively to two debates in the House and tomorrow I will attend a meeting of the Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment to discuss the NBP. I will be accompanied by the officials from my Department who are directly managing the procurement process. I have ensured that citizens can get information on the availability of high-speed broadband through my Department's website, including in particular the interactive high-speed broadband map. Every week, I provide detailed information to Deputies in response to parliamentary questions and my Department continues to help citizens by replying to emails received through the dedicated broadband inbox. As the procurement process proceeds and as the deployment of high-speed broadband continues, I will continue to provide updates to Deputies and Senators and to the public. I encourage colleagues to think long and hard before they vote on the motion in the House tomorrow and to avoid jeopardising this project for rural Ireland.

I had the opportunity yesterday evening to outline my deep concerns on the state of the roll-out of broadband. There is nothing between the Minister and me in policy terms; the issue is around the methodology. The Minister is right to say he has provided a considerable amount of information on broadband but, sadly, we have not had broadband itself. I have raised very real concerns with the Minister privately and in the House on an ongoing basis. I have sought from the Minister a timeline in answer to three simple questions: when he expects the contract to be signed; when he expects work to begin; and when he expects that work to be completed. To date, I have received no clarity around that.

Each time I have raised the issue, the Minister asked me not to go there because it would delay the process. I do not know how the Minister expects me to accept that if he does not at least give me access to, or visibility of, the timelines he is talking about. When I proposed in 2016 that the State should take this contract into State ownership to be fully in charge and in control of its roll-out, the Minister said "Do not do that". I pulled back at the time because the Minister indicated that it would delay the process by six months. There has been a 19-month delay since 2016 against a timeline the Minister did not know the detail of or was unable to publish.

I referred to a further six months.

Any time I asked the Minister to give me a timeline, his simple answer was that it was not about timing and that the matter was far too important for that. He said it was more important to get it right because the contract was going to exist for 25 years. When I bring forward an idea about trying to get it right, however, time becomes a problem again. Time is only an issue when something comes from this side of the House. When the issues are on the Minister's side, it is not a problem. There has been a 19-month delay so far. When he was pressed on the radio this morning by Bryan Dobson, the Minister indicated that September was when he, perhaps, expected a contract to be signed. By then, it will be a 27-month delay. The Minister has made no announcement on any delay. While I had my differences with the Minister's predecessor, Alex White, he flagged a six-month delay prior to leaving office. Since the Minister took over, there has been a 13-month delay, but the Minister has never once come to the House. I have given him ample opportunity to explain that there was a delay, but the Minister resisted. He has no choice now because of what has happened with Eir, which is not necessarily his fault.

All I want the Minister to do is to take stock of where we are at. We cannot continue with delay after delay and, as companies the size of the ESB, Vodafone and Eir pull out, fail to ask legitimate questions such as whether there is something inherently wrong with the tendering process. Someone reminded me today of another project which came through the process the Minister has a new name for. It is not a tender, it is another type of procurement. I think it is the one that was used to get us the famous Eircode postcodes. We know where that is going, or not. For months, the Minister came to the House to tell me it was really good because it would get ambulances to the right locations. I understand the ambulance service is now going to use something else or so I have been informed.

That is not true.

Whether that is true, the Minister can confirm to me. The simple fact is that the process, at this stage, does not have the confidence of the people who expect to be served. Certainly, I do not have confidence in it. It is the Minister's prerogative. He has responsibility and, if he chooses to ignore the outcome of tomorrow's vote, let it be on his head.

If the Minister gives any credibility to the Members here who are as serious as he is about a policy position to deliver broadband to those people, we need more than just information on the map, the intervention area, the covered area, the areas which will have duplicate and triplicate services and so on. What we want is broadband for all of the reasons I have outlined. As the Minister knows well, that is what his constituents want. I ask the Minister to go back to the Government and to then come forward with a credible proposal to review the process. The Minister mentioned in a briefing the other day that he had a plan B. Perhaps he might share that with me and my colleague across the House. We might then have some confidence that the Minister, his Department and the 80 external advisers have thought this through. I might then be prepared to accept the Minister's bona fides and those of the State on the delivery of this contract.

I welcome the opportunity to speak briefly on the issue. I would have liked to speak yesterday evening on my colleague's welcome and timely motion but it was necessary to allow other speakers to contribute who do not have the opportunity very often to do so. In the last few weeks, Fine Gael and the honourable Minister of the Independent variety have made a right dog's dinner of a couple of issues. The national planning framework is one and the other is this debacle around the provision of broadband and the Government's inability to put every part of the country on a level playing pitch regarding basic infrastructure. It is typical of the attitude of the Government. There is nothing among the Members of the House akin to an urban-rural divide. Far be it from us that it be the case. We believe it is fine to plan for Ireland's cities up to 2040 but not instead of or in neglect of rural Ireland. Rural Ireland and those who do not have access to this basic necessity do not take kindly to being treated as an add-on or second tier of society. Rural Ireland has been an add-on in this instance, however, because, as Deputy Dooley said, we have listened to three Ministers make commitments on the boldest of plans. We have held onto that commitment with the best goodwill based on what the Minister said when the Government took office. It has not materialised, however.

The handling of this procurement has been anything but appropriate. Over the years and even in my office today, I have had many conversations with constituents who do not have access to broadband despite the way we laud the idea of a knowledge economy and notwithstanding the Minister's assertion that, by the end of the year, seven out of ten households and 96% of business parks will have it. I owe it to my constituents, including those who are in touch with me on this on a regular basis, to record the various areas in my constituency which do not have access to high-speed broadband.

These are as follows: Screggan in Tullamore, Tubber, Horseleap, Rhode, Bracknagh, Durrow, Cloghan, Ballycumber, Ballycommon, Lusmagh, Cushina, Walsh Island, Pollagh, Ferbane business park, Coleraine, Kilmalogue, Daingean, Mountlucas, Clonygowan, Clongarrett, Killure, Treascon in Portarlington, Ballyclare, Blue Ball, Shannonbridge, Bellair, Lahinch in Clara, Ballycolgan, Gracefield, Barna, Erry in Clara, Clonsast, Crinkill, Shinrone, Ballycowan, Coolnahiley, Kilmucklin, Kilnabinnia, High Street Belmont, Tinnycross, Clonfanlough, Gloucester, Creevagh, Moneygall, Sharavogue, Killyon, Rath, Croghan, Ballyboy, Kinnitty, Ballinlough and Clareen.

I do not know how many houses are in those townlands and areas. However, I can assure the Minister that when he says to me and those like me not to play politics with this issue, I am afraid that - surprise, surprise - I am a politician and I represent the people in these areas. These people have placed their trust in public representatives and in Ministers who have the privilege to lead Government on this issue. When I go back to these people, I will be saying to them that when they get their opportunity, they can pass judgment on the Government and its commitment in this area. It has failed them. The way they express their sentiment in that regard is that they will not be voting for the Minister or anybody belonging to him, having listened to the commitments he has made and given the ample opportunity he has had to progress this matter. I and others on this side of the House will be putting forward means and methods by which it can be done, sooner rather than later. We will ask those people to trust us and trust our commitment, based on the Minister's failure. I hope I never again have to read the like of what I have read into the record when we are talking about basic services and basic necessities, as the Minister rightly calls them, in this day and age.

Many of those areas will have it before the end of the year, including Shannonbridge.

I call Deputy Brian Stanley, who is sharing time with Deputy Carol Nolan.

The privatised route for the provision of telecommunications, both with the original sale of Telecom Éireann and the completely privatised route for the national broadband plan, has not worked. There has been a long line of mistakes, false promises and false starts when it comes to broadband roll out. In 2002, Fianna Fáil when in government promised to roll out broadband on a national basis. The last Fine Gael Government unveiled the national broadband plan in 2012 but we are still no closer six years later. The programme for Government has a commitment "to provide broadband to every house and business in the country by 2020", which is not too far away, and still householders and businesses are waiting.

The State cannot be held over a barrel by international financiers but this is what has happened, although the Minister is trying to tell us it has not. He tells us he has 80 advisers. Those advisers should know this, as he and I know it. Anybody who has been to a fair or a market knows it - there is only one bidder. The State should have complete control when dealing with a project on this scale, which involves 542,000 premises, given this could improve quality of life and bring real economic opportunities to rural Ireland.

There is clearly a problem affecting every county in the State. In Laois there are 12,721 households and businesses in blackspot areas yet to be covered by the national broadband plan. I want to ask when those people will have broadband. There are almost 12,000 commuters leaving the county every morning because of the work situation. Some of these commuters work in small businesses that could be located in Laois and some could have work-from-home options if they had the broadband to sustain that. This is a county where the IDA has an appalling track record in creating employment. I and the other two Laois Deputies are due to meet the IDA next week to deal with this issue. In the absence of IDA development and of any major industries being brought to the area, local people are trying to develop their own businesses but they are hamstrung due to the lack of broadband, which goes right across the midlands. There are people contacting me from across my constituency and beyond. The absence of broadband is affecting farmers, who are now supposed to file for grants online, as well as small businesses and students - the list goes on.

The Minister said to me in this Chamber two weeks ago that if he was to do all of this again, he might not have taken this course. I asked him last night to tell me what course he would have taken with hindsight. In any case, what is the timeline for the route he is taking? What is the timeline for the completion of the work on the more than 12,000 homes in Laois and more than 542,000 across the country? With only one bidder, all the bargaining power is in its hands. What happens if that bidder withdraws? The Minister has not told us that and we need to know. What is plan B? I have not heard it and I would like to know what it is.

In the absence of a plan B, Sinn Féin proposes that we would have a speedy examination of the possibility of progressing the national broadband plan through greater State involvement, recognising the negative effects of the decision to privatise Telecom Éireann in 1999. We also propose looking at the feasibility of using existing State infrastructure and resources held by the ESB, which was interested in rolling this out but pulled out because the Minister allowed Eir to cherry pick it, as is clear from what has happened. We also want to place an obligation on existing providers to ensure existing customers are guaranteed a minimum connection speed. The 542,000 households and businesses are waiting. We need a solution that will provide high-speed broadband at an affordable price.

In his letter to the eir CEO, the Minister stated that the draft contract negotiation phase of this project would not occur for several weeks. However, he tried to give us the impression a few minutes ago that everything is ready to go, despite what he said to the CEO in the third paragraph of that letter. I am not reassured about this from what the Minister has told us. This project is in deep trouble. I do not see anything wrong with spending seven, eight or nine weeks looking at this to see if we can take a better route.

The broadband procurement issue raises grave concerns over the Government's ability to oversee the development and delivery of essential infrastructure across the country. The Minister, Deputy Naughten, boldly claimed that Ireland would be the first country in the world to bring broadband into every home yet, at the end of 2017, we still have not attained 100% coverage while the Netherlands achieved 98% installation and Luxembourg 97%. Arguably, both of these regions are geographically small, with high population density. More impressive, perhaps, is Norway, which has attained 94% coverage with a little over 5 million of population across more than 4.5 times the landmass of Ireland and a sparse population density of 15 people per sq. km compared to Ireland's 69 people per sq. km.

Broadband infrastructure as an essential element of the social, economic and educational functioning of rural areas has been debated many times in this House yet here we are again, haggling with eir about public access to poles that used to be in the ownership of the people. High-quality, high-speed Internet access is a way of life in Nordic countries. Their governments support it, the Internet service providers provide it and the people use it. The high-quality Internet access available in Nordic Europe did not happen by accident. All of these countries have governments and telecommunications companies that are focused on providing exceptional Internet service to populations that are active Internet users. Finland was the first country in the world to declare that broadband access is a legal right for every citizen and 95% of the population has 4G coverage. It is clear, given the track record the Nordic countries have in STEM, that these are the countries we need to look to for good practice and leadership.

The Minister's responsibility in bringing this contract across the line has, if he will excuse the pun, broad-reaching consequences. The necessity of broadband infrastructure to sustaining the essential social, economic and educational functioning of rural areas has been debated too many times in this House.

No one needs to be reminded of the everyday dependence on digital connectivity to deliver education, run farms and businesses, sell tourism products and distribute millions of financial transactions between people and businesses in every nook and cranny of the State. Despite experts' attempts at future-proofing, new digital services and practices are continually emerging which were never seriously considered. Services such as virtual GP clinics are gaining credibility in the provision of online medical consultations and prescription of medication which had previously required a GP surgery visit. It is evident that such applications have a major contribution to make in providing services to remote dwellers where conventional means are becoming less viable. Similarly, according to the Western Development Commission's Insights from the Digital Economy Conference, 9% of adults run a business from home and 39% of the population do some work at home. This highlights the importance of adequate high-speed broadband in our homes to enable self-employment and home-working on a more common basis. Remote working eases demands on transport infrastructure and compensates users further by improving their opportunity costs for enhanced work-life balance. It also has potential to improve the potential to increase women's employment in rural areas for those for whom child care costs are prohibitive or child care services unavailable.

I can see from the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment's high-speed broadband map of county statistics that the midland counties have achieved the 88% national average coverage. I have also received information from the Minister, Deputy Heather Humphreys, that IDA Ireland has appointed a dedicated regional manager to boost the number of jobs created in this region and that the agency has launched a digital campaign to market the region to potential investors. These investments and their outcomes are both dependent on achieving full rural deployment as soon as possible. This will be influenced by the existence of high-speed broadband which is essential for job creation. I ask the Minister for assurances that the targets for 100% broadband coverage to every householder in Ireland has not in any way been hindered by the withdrawal of Eir from the contracting process. Can the Minister assure me and the rural dwellers across the country that high-speed broadband will be available to every household and business premises in Ireland under this contract and can he indicate the anticipated completion date? The issue is of great concern to rural communities and is a source of great frustration to over 12,000 constituents in County Offaly who want urgent action and not meaningless dialogue.

I will begin by examining some of the Minister's speech to the House tonight. This debate is a continuation of the one on the Fianna Fáil Private Members' motion that was before the House last night. If I read the political landscape correctly that the Opposition will support the motion, then I do not see why we could not have a short, sharp review. The Minister's response to that was inadequate in saying that it would delay the process inordinately. I do not think anyone here buys that response as there is huge scepticism about the manner in which this process has been handled.

I refer to the Minister's speech tonight. He said: "My Department had no involvement in the selection of premises for inclusion in this commercial roll-out and that was entirely a decision for Eir as it would be for any commercial company". He is referring to the 300,000 connections that were to be rolled out which were beyond the State intervention. Given Eir's form, having been through seven take-overs and been asset-stripped, I do not know if I would believe the Rosary out of its mouth, as someone put it to me last week, on the matter. For the Minister to come in and say he had a commitment agreement in respect of the 300,000 without placing a copy of that commitment before the House beggars belief.

It was published at the time. It is on the website.

If that is the case, and I acknowledge that it was published-----

It was published last April.

-----what is the legal status of that document? It is clear that it has no real legal status. While the Minister may come in here and say that 121,000 houses have been passed by, I can say that of those 121,000 that are in this plan for 300,000 plan-----

Well, 121,000 is quoted somewhere among some of the figures-----

-----which the Minister has given to us, in the phalanx of information that we have received. It is unusual for a Minister to interrupt a Member of the Opposition when he or she is speaking. It is in some of the correspondence that we received because I could wallpaper this Chamber with the amount of paper I have received on this issue from the Minister in the last 48 hours. His new-found transparency will come as a great surprise to many people in this House.

That is rubbish.

The Minister raised the Fianna Fáil Private Members' motion. Yesterday, I asked about red-line issues. The Minister has published documentation exchanged between himself and Mr. Moat on the red-line issues. We have had no articulation from the Minister as to what those issues were between Eir and the Government.

The Minister seeks to be non-partisan on this. As soon as he decided he would set a 90-week target, or whatever it was, on this, it became a politically driven target. It is a bit rich for the Minister to come to the House tonight and tell us that we should not play politics with this. Last week in the House, Deputy Brendan Howlin, raised the matter of there being a plan B. The Minister has failed to tell the House this evening what that plan B is. All we have been told is that he is supporting the Enet bit, but even then the Minister has not told us what price will now be paid for the Enet tender.

Going back to the 131,000 figure, some of the houses have been passed by. I spoke of a very typical scenario which happens in rural Ireland where one might have an enclave of 12 houses. Some 12 poles to their left and to their right are covered but that enclave in the middle is not covered. Can the Minister guarantee that in these the blackspots, that the State-aided national broadband plan will cover these, at a price?

I am sorry. The Minister said "Yes", but the people who live in that enclave of 12 houses are scratching their heads and wondering why, if Eir was so committed to this process, that it passed 12 houses on the same stretch of road. What was that all about? That causes great confusion for many families depending on this scheme.

I am hopeful that we can get to a point where the 100% pEnetration rate of which the Minister speaks can be achieved. Whatever way the Minister wishes to cut the knife, he is politically exposed on this question. He set out clear targets and it is only right and proper that we interrogate the information that the Minister is providing us.

With all the information we have received in the last 24 hours, I admit that it is taking us some time to try to interpret the correspondence, but I will refer once again to the Minister's document in regard to the 300,000 premises. The document states that the fourth quarter figures for Eir's rural deployment had yet to be verified by the Department, however Eir indicated that it had passed almost 121,000 premises to be identified, of the identified 300,000 premises as of December 2017.

I am merely quoting, for the record, figures that the Minister has provided us with.

The Minister has also provided us with figures on SIRO. He states that SIRO has committed to investing €450 million into providing fibre broadband to 0.5 million regional homes and businesses in 51 towns. As of January of this year, 127,000 fibre-to-the-home connections have been built in 19 towns across the country, with 32 to follow. I welcome this. What I want to ask the Minister - perhaps the Minister or his officials can clarify this to me by email after this debate is over - is whether there is a crossing over. Will we now face a situation where in certain quarters in certain parts of this country one can have the Eir offering, the SIRO offering or any number of offerings? SIRO, which was one of the bidders and which included ESB and which had given a commitment by virtue of the fact that it was part of the tender process, wanted to be part of this national broadband plan and is now getting on with matters within the market. The clarification I am seeking is, how is SIRO managing to provide fibre broadband, with its €450 million investment, to 500,000 regional homes and businesses in 51 towns and why is it that SIRO felt it had to pull out of this process? Is it not the case that SIRO pulled out of this process because as soon as the Minister made the commitment agreement with Eir for 300,000, it was in no way feasible for any other bidder, or any bidder of SIRO's stature, to be able to stay in the competition and it has decided to go it alone? There are still serious questions to be asked of the Minister's handling of this.

The Minister has invested heavily, politically, from a reputational point of view, in delivering this. We all want to give the Minister a chance to do that but I contend that there is increasing scepticism, particularly in those areas which are black spots, and because of the withdrawal of eir from the process, about the Government's ability to deliver this plan on time and on budget.

With more than 0.5 million homes, schools and businesses in rural Ireland without high-speed broadband and nearly 40% of the population affected by this, we have this situation. It is a fiasco.

What is the position facing a student in one of these areas who has examinations coming up in a few months who does not have proper access? What is the position facing a business that is trying to advertise itself and its products and invest in developing a website with this type of coverage? It is a privatisation fiasco.

Tendering meant that Government was effectively privatising the broadband service infrastructure. When they put it out, they had a choice of what sort of contract to offer: full concession or commercial status. They offered full concession. This meant that a private company builds it, then operates for 25 years on behalf of the State but at the end of the 25 years gets to own the infrastructure. It is a privatisation model of infrastructure. Private operators might be prepared to provide the service to a small city or a large town where there is a big concentration of customers, such as Galway, but for significant parts of rural Ireland it is a different story because one does not have the same clusters and the same potential to make profit, which is the bottom line and the agenda for them.

This is part of a bigger privatisation fiasco. Fianna Fáil is pointing the finger at the Minister across the floor of the House. Fianna Fáil privatised Telecom Éireann in 1999. Ms Mary O'Rourke was the Minister at the time and all of these problems stem from that decision. In Telecom Éireann, prior to privatisation in 1999, there had been much analogue-to-digital investment. In fact, Telecom Éireann was shaping up to be at the top of the class with the explosion of Internet services but then Fianna Fáil stepped in and organised privatisation and it has been downhill all the way ever since then.

When it was put on the Stock Exchange, it was valued at €8.4 billion. When it was sold to Mr. Tony O'Reilly, the price was €3 billion. The mobile arm was sold to Vodafone at the urging of Deputy Ross, who now sits in government. The O'Reilly operation asset stripped the company and made €1 billion for itself in doing so. They loaded up the company with their own debt. It was then sold to Babcock and Brown. They asset stripped the company. They sold the headquarters. They sold the phone masts. They loaded the company with more debts and then it was sold to Singapore Technologies Telemedia, STT, for €39 million.

If we look at the current position with Eir, Eir has a mobile network - the old Meteor network. It has broadband. It has some television packages, including Eir Sport, and the cables. The cables, that are underneath the ground, are the key piece of infrastructure here. I stated that it was sold for €39 million but it was valued at €3.94 billion. The problem was, with all the asset-stripping and debt-loading, it had debts of €3.87 billion.

The only way of sorting this out - the Minister can go around the Houses with his reviews and this and that - is to take the following steps. First, the Minister must re-nationalise and reverse the privatisation and the disaster of that under Fianna Fáil that has been built on by Fine Gael down through the years; and not accept the bad debts of the vulture funds, the debts that have been loaded on by the O'Reillys and Babcock and Brown down through the years, asset-stripping the company and saddling it with their own debts - the Minister should cancel those debts. If the Minister pays compensation, he should pay it on the basis of proven need to ordinary people only. The Minister should not pay the debts of the asset strippers and the billionaires. The Minister will have a nationalised company to invest in broadband. The Minister should provide the service that the private sector has not delivered, is not delivering and will not deliver, and while he does so, provide decent and unionised jobs. The Minister can tell me that flies in the face of EU regulations and all the rest of it - so be it. It is the only way to do the job. The private sector has failed. Privatisation has failed. The Government has failed on this issue. Re-nationalisation is the only way.

I thank the Independents 4 Change for giving me the time to speak.

As the Minister and anyone here in the House is probably aware, the greatest mistake that ever was made was the sale of Eircom because since then, no matter what Minister is in power, it has put us on the back foot. It is probably one of the costliest mistakes this country has ever made and we probably will continue to regret it.

Along with that, from what I understand, we are coupled with EU rules on how we conduct procurement. Basically, the State cannot have ownership of different assets which is playing havoc, not only in this country but in other parts of Europe.

Since the privatisation of Telecom Éireann, we have relied on other private operators to provide services. My background is in the private sector. The ESB is a great company. When anything goes wrong, it is out there and able to solve the problem. Such services may not make money for a Government or the company involved but they create the environment and the opportunity for people to be able to go to work and pay taxes, which in turn may pay for the few quid that would be lost.

I know the Minister has sent around a document, and I thank him for honouring what he said last night in getting a person to talk to me. The first thing that needs to be done, and I ask the Minister to arrange this, is a meeting between him and his officials and Senators and others in the likes of the audiovisual room to bring them up to speed on the exact problems and some of the obstacles and where we are and where we intend to be. In fairness to the officials, their insight is very helpful to people. It would be very easy for me, being in the same constituency as the Minister, to stand here and, on Facebook later, have a right go at him but I will not do so because one vision we must have-----

The Deputy is looking for the Minister's second preferences.

For too long broadband has been promised by all sides of the Dáil. We must work together to ensure it is delivered. There are obstacles. We must hope Enet stays in the game because we had two other engines on the plane and they fell off. I am very wary of Eir, and I do not deny that. I was even more alarmed when I saw who is buying Eir. I have read up a little on developments in France and I worry about where eir is going, what it will try to do and what it would try to stifle. All politicians across the floor need to work together. Whatever legislation needs to be driven through here, be it at 12 o'clock at night or 7 o'clock in the morning, support must be given from all sides to put down the foundation that can deliver for us what is required. Whatever the consequences for some of these private operators down the road, it is broadband we want in all parts of rural Ireland and not to worry about them. Right across the floor support needs to be given to ensure we have no obstacle in our way, that we are ahead of any future obstacle that might come up and that we can plough through it without certain vested interests trying to hold the country to ransom.

This is about the north, south, east and west of the country and about delivery. The Minister said that since there is now one crowd in the game, he may be able to speed things up in certain circumstances. It is vital for every Deputy in the House and for the public that this starts rolling rapidly. The Minister knows as well as anyone the frustration that is felt. People are beginning to wonder whether the roll-out will ever happen. The Minister's Department needs to ensure we are forthright and honest that the work being done by Eir is being done by Eir and that no Government or anyone else will do it. I have questioned how Eir even got that contract. I have read up a little about it and about EU rules and so on and I see that, unfortunately, many times one cannot stop a tide when the EU holds a country to ransom. This is the flaw that seems to be the big problem.

My first instinct would be that whatever compulsory purchase orders, CPOs, or emergency legislation is required, and I know one can have problems in that regard and the Minister probably has better briefings on all this, must be brought in here. I urge him not to be afraid to say here if such a thing is to come and not to be one bit worried about what we must take on to ensure this is delivered. The sooner this contract is done, the better. Yes, it probably will cost more money, but my argument is always that if we are to spend €3 billion or €4 billion to bring people from Dublin Airport, which I think is needed, and I do not say it is not, we can bring broadband to the number of people we have talked about and 1.2 million people can benefit from it daily. That can make a country better and can allow people to work from home. We do not need too many more downers. There was trepidation the minute we heard eir had gone. Perhaps it was a good thing, but the worry is whether Enet will stay in the game. It is very important it would do so, or else we will be left with nothing, we will be back to the grindstone and we will be two or three years again going through the process.

I ask the Minister and his officials to ensure that whenever this contract is signed, in the next few months, with a bit of luck, the ante is upped. I have done construction jobs and water jobs around the country, and there may be timeline pressures on them and one may have to put more resources and gangs into doing the work. It is vital that when we hit the ground, we do so firmly. I would have fairly big penalties for the people involved in the tender process if they did not deliver on time, but I would encourage them first. I do not like the word "penalties". I would nearly pay them a bonus to get it done in a 12 month or 14 month timeframe with more gangs rather than wear it out for the extra bit of time and have parts of Ireland left without broadband.

I ask the Minister to arrange for every Deputy and other Members of the Oireachtas to have a very frank meeting in the audiovisual room in order that everyone understands where we are coming from.

I too am glad to speak about this very important issue. I acknowledge the Minister's presence. This issue is as important as rural electrification was fadó fadó. We had very little at that time but we did have imaginative people and a good vision.

The late great Canon Hayes, a founder member of Muintir na Tíre, said it was better to light a candle than to curse the dark. He was instrumental in having it rolled out to areas in County Tipperary and other parts of the country. He came from Limerick.

I was involved in the talks with the Minister when we were all Independent Deputies after being elected almost two years ago. They lasted a long time. The Minister decided to catch the wagon back to his old home ground of the Fine Gael Party and I wish him well. I have engagement with him and, in fairness, appreciate that he briefs rural Independent Deputies almost weekly, but we had no briefing on this issue. I know that it is probably a bombshell that hit him, but we need to be briefed on it. He needs to give us the facts. I have serious concerns about where we are. I have said at meetings in his office - he probably thought I was a little harsh - that I had no faith in the pronouncements he was making because I had been listening to them for too long. I had listened to them when I was in Fianna Fáil. We had roll-out after roll-out when I came into the House ten and a half years ago in 2007. We then had more, as well as promises and everything else. We have had more roll-outs than we have had dinners. It is all poppycock and a farce.

It beggars belief that in 2018 we cannot deliver broadband to almost every house and that rural Ireland must again be left behind on the hind tit, as I said one time to former Deputy Pat Rabbitte. He was speaking about something being as useful as tits on a bull and I told him about Mrs Murphy's cow who had lost her two front tits. She had got caught in wire and been left with a dudeen of a tit. That is where we in rural Ireland are now and it is not fair or acceptable and the Minister cannot stand over it. I wish him well in his portfolio, but he was given the poisoned chalice by his old friend and sometimes foe, the former Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny. He was also given responsibility for post offices. The Minister, Deputy Michael Ring, had responsibility for them but could not wait to get rid of them. The issue was too hot to handle and he shoved them over on top of the Minister. He did a Pontius Pilate and gave them to the Minister. It was another nightmare. Deputy Enda Kenny knew well that this was not going to happen because he had been around a lot longer than me. He has been here for almost 40 years. As I said, we have had roll-out after roll-out. It is like the Rolling Stones - roll on Monday; it is just not happening. The rich pickings have been taken. All of the companies involved during the years got rich pickings and milked them for what they were worth and then left these shores. I was a backbencher supporting a Government and that is what I learned. I have been burned so many times on this issue and we all have a share of the blame, including me, but it is just not good enough.

I salute Eircom, the old Department of Posts and Telegraphs and the late Albert Reynolds. I met him at a Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis in 1979 when he announced new measures. At the time people could not access a telephone service and there were only 20 or 30 telephones in a parish. People also had to dial the post office. I salute the postmistresses who sat up all night to answer the telephones and put people through. We have come a long way since. The late Albert Reynolds modernised the service with great vision, passion and enthusiasm. He was businessman of renown. His family no longer owns the business, but it is flourishing.

We are now in a situation where we have got bogged down in red tape, procurement rules and God only knows what. The con artists are milking us dry. They are the ones who were given the job of rolling out this service, but they left these shores after they had taken the rich pickings. They had no bother in providing broadband in the cities which have everything, even as far down the road as Naas and other big towns, but in country areas we have nothing. It is like the Third World in many parts of rural Ireland that I try to represent.

I heard some news tonight from the Minister's constituency, or perhaps it was Sligo. It is totally frustrating to have to try to run a business without broadband; it cannot be done. We know that we have to have the modern tools of trade. I am a businessman and we have to have the most up-to-date equipment as otherwise we will not be wanted. That is tough, but it is the name of the game and the way it is. There is the seeking of tenders and people must pony up and seek them or else there will be penalty clauses, rightly so.

With regard to the giving of Government contracts, let us take the national children's hospital as an example. I do not want to stray from the issue, but at the start the cost was €400 million. Now it is €1.4 billion and the hospital has not reached any height. It will never be finished. We are a soft touch. The Government, Government agencies and the HSE are a soft touch for the cowboys and cowgirls and the con artists and this is clear evidence. It is as clear as the nose on the Minister's face and mine. We have been conned and robbed and the ones who are picking up the can are taxpayers, including people living in rural Ireland. In some places in urban Ireland there is no broadband or even a modicum of service. One does not need to be an expert to know this.

I salute those involved in Eir - I knew many of them - who in bad weather and poor conditions brought telephone lines and equipment over mountains. What do we have now? Two weeks ago a woman contacted me because she had no telephone service since Storm Ophelia. Thankfully, it is has been restored, but that was scandalous. I salute the minority of staff left working for Eir, formerly Eircom and before that the Department of Post and Telegraphs. A good friend of mine, Mr. Paddy Kelly, carries out repairs in a European Parliament constituency, but they cannot be made as there is only a skeleton staff. I used to do hedge cutting and hedges could not be cut as telephone lines were lying on ditches. Poles also fell out onto the road. It was a shambles. The company was sold off to Eir by a Fianna Fáil Government. It plucked, picked and milked it. It was sabotaged and now it is no more. We are a soft touch.

I do not know whether T. K. Whitaker is alive or dead. He was such an inspiration, with Canon Hayes and others.

He is. I thought he was, but I was not sure. He was a visionary. We had such a dedicated public service, but now we cannot organise a contract for a blooming tennis match. We have laws and regulations and procurement rules. Today I had here people with an excellent project. I salute Mr. Jonathan Irwin and others, including in the Irish Prison Service, who came here today. I also salute the Irish Horse Welfare Trust. The project is in the Minister's constituency. He had a representative at the meeting because he was too busy to attend, but he is supporting the project which is wonderful. Mr. Irwin has raised €101,000 to build ten stables, but we are being told there could be problems in procurement. It is money that people gave voluntarily and on which they had paid their taxes and everything else. They made the donations to fund this wonderful project.

For the past couple of years, to apply for EU tenders, small people must have a turnover of €5 million. No one has made millions in recent years. It just stinks to high heaven and is a lethargic approach adopted by the mechanisms of government. I am speaking about the official or permanent government. It is a con job. It cannot see beyond its nose. It is not fit to give contracts to fellows who are serving at mass because it has no interest in doing so and no fear of retribution or anyone challenging it. It might be cautioned or people might have their wages cut, but there is no accountability.

There are so few Members on the Government benches now for most debate, but the problem is that there is hardly a businessman or businesswoman among them. However, there are, barristers, solicitors, teachers, doctors and God only knows what. They are good people in their own right, but they do not understand business and how it ticks. However, the poor people who are trying to do business understand it. It is a shame and disgrace that we are speaking again about the lack of broadband and we will be here again in two or three years' time. There is transparency in procurement and now there is one supplier, which is a monopoly. I will bring in a game of Monopoly to show it to the Government. I would not be surprised to learn that Eir was in cahoots with Enet from England which has no experience of operating in rural areas.

This is and has been a con job. If it walks like and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. It is outrageous. There are regulators who are unbelievable. I have said many times that they are toothless and useless. Where are they in all of this? When the contracts were given during the years, where were they? They took their pensions and we now have all of these quangos. I see the officials whispering to the Minister and looking at him. I respect what they do and I am not blaming them but the whizz kids, the advisers and the smart boyos. Every businesswoman who opens the door tomorrow morning will pay rates, staff wages and the ESB, but she must also pay the banks which are terrorising people as they try to keep the doors open.

This is a waste. We could undertake the rural electrification project in the late 1950s. I remember Canon Hayes saying to people that they should light a candle rather than curse the dark. We are now inept to a massive degree. Thank God, we gained our freedom through the people who had fought for it, but now we have been tainted and are corrupt beyond belief. It is all backhanders and sideshows and to hell with ordinary people living down lanes and boreens. It is a case of croppies lie down.

It is shameful, it is disgusting and it stinks and I have no faith in the process.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the issue of broadband in rural Ireland and also on Fianna Fáil's proposal to launch a review. First, as a rural Deputy, no more than the Minister, I fully understand what is lacking. We have talked about it for years, and I know that it was high on the agenda when we negotiated the programme for Government. What is happening at the moment is the process of bringing the programme for Government to fruition.

There have been hiccups along the way. However, I want to say something about rural broadband, something I have made clear on many occasions. I am not happy with the way Eir is performing in its commercial roll-out. My concern is that gaps are appearing all over the country in the roll-out of rural broadband. These gaps become apparent when one travels down a road with 50 or 60 houses, 50 of which are connected while the remaining houses in the middle are not. That is leaving a gap and it is very divisive. It is a way of dividing communities, putting somebody with broadband on a higher pedestal than somebody who does not have it. Given what Eir has done, students find they have to go to a neighbour's house to study for exams or they have to stay on in college in Galway while their friends can go home to study. In one house, a farmer can do all of his accounts and form-filling online, but in the next house that cannot be done.

This is a huge problem and while I am not technically-minded in terms of how broadband works, I know that when 50 houses out of 60 are connected and ten are not, something is wrong. Eir has caused a problem by creating these gaps, which will be a problem when the broadband network is realised with Enet, after that contract is, hopefully, signed. Access to these houses to ensure broadband is delivered is a concern.

Eir should be asked how it will deal with this. The last thing we want is to say that these houses, families, students or farmers will have to wait until we work it out later. I know from the briefing I got from the Minister that Eir is still willing to help out in any way it can, but its contribution must be more than words. Access to these houses is very important. It is an issue that has created untold anger. The reason people are talking about broadband is that Johnny can have it but Mick cannot.

People in this country have been patient, and now they see that something is happening. However, it has to happen in a very even-handed manner, and I stress to the Minister that Eir should be brought back into the discussions. If it is not going to fill these small gaps, that should be made a priority under the new contract, that is, that they are taken care of first, not last.

To return to the issue of Eir's withdrawal, I do not know if it is a good or a bad thing. I am not too worried about it. The Department and the Minister have done a damned good job in a very difficult, technical procurement process. As somebody who understands procurement and has some knowledge of this competitive dialogue process, I know that it is used for large infrastructure jobs. However, it is also used in cases where there are complicated and varying proposals and it is a question of trying to find the best fit. That is why it is competitive and there is dialogue. It is also why a number of bidders are brought into the process in order that the best tender can be found.

The fact that a company decides to pull out of the process does not mean the process is complete. Perhaps Eir's withdrawal is something we will look back on in a couple of months and say that it was all right because we end up, hopefully, with a successful contract. Maybe we will save some time in the process now that we are dealing with the nuts and bolts of getting a contract in place.

It is important we understand that people get exercised about the fact they do not have broadband and they have to wait. That is one of the things that motivated us when we were negotiating the programme for Government, especially rural Deputies, of which the Minister was one. We want to see this up and running. We want to see broadband in place and being rolled out in a very efficient and speedy manner. That is why it takes time to get the contractor, or the supplier, in place.

If we started a review of the procurement now, we would delay the process. There are many external experts and bodies advising on this. I looked at the names involved, and I recognised some of them. Highly accomplished and qualified people are providing the necessary advice to the Department and the Minister. However, it is important to remember that having a review at this point would be counter-productive. We have a job to do and we should encourage the Minister to make sure we stick with the plan and broadband is provided.

I agree with Deputy Fitzmaurice that we have received much information from the Minister over the last day or two and the briefing was very good. However, a briefing in the AV room for all Deputies who are interested in the topic, so that we are more in tune with what is happening, would not go amiss. I know it is not easy because carrying out any kind of infrastructure project takes time. The last thing we want is to find, when we have finished the process and spent the money, that something is not right. That is why we have to make sure it is done thoroughly, in a way that will be of benefit to the people who have waited so long for it.

Some people get exercised and try to play politics with broadband, but it is too important for that and we all need to work together on this. We must also reassure the public that broadband will be delivered.

I will return to the only issue I have about which the Minister knows from his own constituency. The gaps that have emerged should be a priority for us. We should not say to people that Johnny down the road has broadband but those further up the road have to wait two years to get theirs. It is important that we give these people confidence that they will be treated as a priority within the roll out, when it happens.

We are all looking for information but when a procurement process is ongoing, it is very important that the Minister does not divulge information that is sensitive, commercially or otherwise. We must respect that. However, I want to compliment him on the information we have got so far. It is important we all work together, not to provoke people, but to reassure them that this Government and the Minister will deliver broadband in a way that we have never seen before. It is a vital infrastructure. We are launching the national planning framework, our ten year capital expenditure programme. However, broadband, water, wastewater, housing and health are the priorities and I offer my total support to the Minister in everything he is trying to do. My last word is to mind the gaps.

I would like to be able to stand up and say that when it comes to broadband, people in rural Ireland are happy with the situation. The patience of people in rural Ireland has evaporated. The anger out there is palpable.

High-speed broadband is critical for the development of rural Ireland. It is the one service which, if put in place, puts a rural company on a level playing field with a city-based competitor. It encourages employers to stay in rural areas and to keep jobs in areas where they are badly needed. This benefits the local shop, post office and pub, thereby maintaining the fabric of rural Ireland. Rural Ireland will not survive without broadband but, unfortunately, the Government has let it down again.

This country offered Eir access, through its local authorities, to the roads and footpaths. We gave it access to the doorsteps of over 75% of homes and businesses. We have given it an opportunity to make huge profits in the years ahead in the lucrative business of providing broadband in our economy. The chairman of Eir last week made much of how Eir had invested €200 million of its money rolling out broadband to 300,000 homes and businesses in small towns and villages over the past 12 months. However, he neglected to say that the retail value of providing broadband to those homes and businesses will give a healthy return on the investment within a couple of years.

This is not the first time Fine Gael in government has undervalued the assets of our country. We all remember how Ireland’s mobile telephone licence was sold for a song to Esat Digifone and Denis O'Brien in the 1990s. That transaction ended up in the Moriarty tribunal and the High Court. Matters connected to that transaction remain unresolved to this day. On this occasion big business, in the shape of Eir, was allowed to cherry-pick the most lucrative areas in the country, while it strung the Government along with promises of tendering for the less profitable rural areas. However, when it had what it wanted it was out the door like a scalded cat, citing commercial, regulatory and governance issues. The Taoiseach and Government must answer for why Eir was allowed to proceed over the past three to four years without being tied into commitments for rural Ireland. Was it naivety on the part of the Minister in negotiating with a powerful company such as Eir, or was it a case of the Government not being up to the job? These questions will have to be answered.

The most frustrating thing is that it did not have to end this way. This could have been a fair deal for both Eir and our economy. Eir could have negotiated a profitable deal for its company, as was its right and its responsibility to its shareholders. Equally, it was the responsibility of the Government to negotiate a fair deal for its shareholders, the ordinary men and women of the country. By any measure the Government has come up short. Either through lack of ability or carelessness the Irish people have been short-changed once again by the Government.

Some 542,000 homes and businesses around the country lack access to broadband and are located in areas where it has been determined it is not commercially viable to deliver broadband. The NBP is intended to overcome this by providing a subsidy to companies to provide broadband of minimum speeds of 25 Mbps to those areas. There are serious questions about whether this speed will be sufficient to cope with future technological changes. In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, in America declared that speeds below 25 Mbps could no longer even be referred to as broadband. Essentially, the Government will provide a subsidy to the successful private sector bidder for 25 years, at the end of which the bidder will have full ownership of the infrastructure.

The importance of broadband to economic growth cannot be overestimated. The National Competitiveness Council report says regional jobs growth is being stunted, and severe criticism is levelled at the sluggish roll-out of the national broadband plan to all regions. The World Bank has found that a 10% increase in broadband penetration increases economic growth by 1.3% over the long term. The facts do not lie. Ireland ranks 42nd in global rankings for the distribution of high speed broadband, while 40% of the population and 96% of the country geographically still lack commercial or fibre coverage. There are approximately 2.3 million premises in the Republic of Ireland. The chief executive officer of the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises Association, ISME, Neil McDonnell, said in August 2017:

SMEs in rural areas, in particular, along the border areas and in Munster, are constantly in contact with us about the issue. The frustration for us is that we understood that the national broadband plan was going to be advanced at a certain rate, but it is not.

These are the facts about broadband. We must provide it to the 530,000 rural homes as quickly as possible. We must inject an urgency that has not existed up to now.

When Fianna Fáil was in government it delivered broadband to 234,000 homes and businesses across the country, meeting 100% of its target. This was unprecedented and remarkably forward thinking in next generation technology. Our current broadband policy is clear. We support the roll-out of fibre optic broadband directly to all homes and businesses in the State by way of direct State intervention and using commercial operators. The only technology that will fully future proof this delivery is via fibre to the home. Fibre to the home is fibre optic cable capable of delivering download speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second or 1,000 Mbps directly to households and businesses. With rapid advances in technology, Irish households should not have to settle for moderate rate Internet speeds which will be overtaken by technological progression in the next five years.

We support the roll-out of fibre to the home and to all premises via a combination of private operators, direct State intervention where it is not commercially viable and facilitating community solutions such as group broadband schemes. However, the benchmark level of 30 Mbps as the minimum threshold for the so-called high-speed broadband promised in the Government’s plan is paltry and represents second rate ambition which will be quickly overtaken by technological advances by the time it is estimated to be completed in 2022. Given the Government's record it is hard to anticipate completion in anywhere near that timeframe. Any State intervention must use a fibre optic based network delivering broadband via fibre to the home technology directly to each premises.

Fianna Fáil has taken steps to accelerate the roll-out of broadband in rural areas by bringing forward a Bill that would make it easier for telecommunications providers to share infrastructure assets such as masts and ducting. This would not only increase connectivity but would likely reduce consumer costs and prevent the construction of unnecessary masts. Our country has a proud tradition of attracting foreign direct investment. Reputation is important on the world stage. How we have handled the roll-out of broadband so far has seriously damaged our reputation. We cannot afford any more slip-ups in this process. The job ahead is difficult and has been made more difficult due to developments in the past week. However, failure is not an option with this project as the stakes for the country are high. I urge the Minister to listen to the Opposition and not to compound the mistakes already made by refusing to recognise a crisis when it is staring him in the face.

If rural Ireland is to survive it must have modern infrastructure. Broadband is an essential part of that. The Government's record to date is extremely poor. The removal of Eir from the market will make the job more difficult, but we will insist on the Government delivering broadband to rural Ireland.

Earlier today I was considering the current situation compared with what it was a year ago when there were three bidders in this process.

SIRO pulled out for its own reasons and Eir has also now withdrawn. We are left with just one bidder in this process to provide broadband to the most difficult to reach parts of the country, areas that have the most potential because they are so under-developed.

Eircom was privatised many years ago. Many ordinary people were stung, having been encouraged to buy shares in Eircom, many for the first time in their lives, and ended up losing so much. Eircom has since been taken over on seven occasions and asset-stripped on all of them. When I travel the rural roads of counties Leitrim, Sligo or Roscommon I see telephone polls hanging into ditches and gone white and almost rotten because, as I was told by a senior person in Eircom a couple of years ago, the budget for dealing with such matters was pulled after one of those takeovers. There was no budget for maintenance, apart from whatever trickle could be gotten by a manager who was prepared to go in and do something in an area.

Members are very aware of the huge number of people left without broadband in rural Ireland. There are 11,500 such people in County Leitrim, over 17,000 in County Cavan, over 34,000 in County Donegal, over 14,500 in County Sligo and almost 19,000 in County Roscommon. All those people have the potential to prosper and try to have a future. As I said, the parts of the country affected are those with the most potential because they are the most under-developed. The lack of progress in the roll-out of broadband indicates that under-development will continue.

A national school in Kiltyclogher in north Leitrim almost closed last year. It set up an online website called KiltyLive to encourage families to move to the area. There is a mediocre broadband service in the village but a mile or two outside it there is practically no broadband, nor any mobile phone coverage. The same pertains in many of our rural areas. Unless the Government gets to grips with this situation we will be lost. A few years ago in Carrigallen, beside where I live, people were worried because under the broadband plan at the time Hutchison 3G was erecting a mast to provide broadband to the town. The mast went up. People were worried about its implications but it is there and working. However, there is still no broadband in the area. The local supermarket cannot have an ATM because the broadband is not strong enough for it to operate. The national school had to get broadband from a separate provider which beams it in from Corn Hill in County Longford.

Each inception of the national broadband programme has been a failure. The big failure on this issue is one of ideology. If one is determined to do something according to an ideological outlook, it will not work because ideology is the greatest solvent of all and disperses all thought in its path. It prevents people from thinking about anything other than the ideological route down which they are going. The ideological route down which this Government and past Governments have gone is that of private being better. The great things done in this country and every other country in the world were achieved when a Government went in, rolled up its sleeves, did the work on behalf of the people and provided for the people. Broadband is an issue on which that must be done.

The State owns the ESB network whereby there is a system of poles and lines through everyone's fields and gardens to every house. That is the route through which the State can deliver broadband to everyone. Any other route is about somebody making a profit and that is the problem with this process. All Members are aware of the huge number of people waiting for broadband. Those people are being betrayed. I do not blame the current Minister, Deputy Naughten, who I believe wants to do the right thing. Unfortunately, he is going down the same route as has previously been travelled, an ideological route whereby broadband must be provided by some company that will come in and do it for profit. That is the root of this disaster. At its core is the ideological problem that when one wants to provide something for the people, it must be done by the Government. The Government must be the provider of last resort and, in this case, the provider of first resort. Schemes such as rural electrification, the installation of telephone lines and water schemes around the country were all provided when the Government of the time rolled up its sleeves and did the work. When such schemes were left to private providers to implement, they took the profitable parts and the rest could go to hell. That is what we see in this case and that is what will happen. I have no faith in the one provider left in the process. That provider is there to make money, not to provide rural broadband to people. Eircom was privatised to get private money in order that we would have the capital assets to roll out broadband across the country. That did not happen and it will not happen tomorrow, the day after that, next year or the year after that. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling him or herself. We need opportunity for the people, not a few well-connected people who think their company will be able to make them big profits from this process. That is not good enough. All Members who have contributed to this debate have mentioned the potential that broadband can bring to people, not just in rural areas but in the entire country, including cities. Everyone must ensure they have connection to the Internet because, no matter where one lives, it provides an opportunity to do business with any part of the world. If we want that to happen, the Minister must take charge and state that the Government is going to roll up its sleeves and do it and that will be done now by getting the money on the international markets, putting it in and doing it. To hell with anyone in Europe who says the Government is not allowed to do so because of some European law that has been made up about it. We need broadband for the people and that broadband should be delivered by the Government they elected, not some provider that rolls up with money it made on a stock exchange. That is nonsense and will not work.

The ideological problem in this process must be tackled. The Government must realise that it has a responsibility to provide broadband and make a real difference to people. It must walk away from the ideology that has brought us along this route for so long and destroyed not just this situation but many others such as Irish Water and the other quangos that were set up. If we are to provide broadband to people, the Government must do so through the ESB network that already brings a line to every house in the country. That is the way forward and anything else is a means of lining somebody's pocket, which is not good enough. I do not think the Minister believes it is good enough.

If Members realised the potential in this situation, action would be taken. This country could have an advantage over many other places and yet we turn our backs on that because someone thinks he or she can make a handy few bob. That is no longer good enough. When we look back on this in 20 years, it will be considered a lost opportunity. The opportunity is now and I appeal to the Minister and the Government to grasp it and tell the remaining bidder that there is no longer a bidding process if there is only one bidder and we will have to start again. The Government must go back to basics. It should go to the international markets, raise the money, contract whoever needs to be contracted and get fibre optic cable up on those poles and into everyone's house. When people see fibre optic cables coming up to the gables of their houses, they will start to believe in the Government and that it is working for people. It is an opportunity for the Government. However, if it continues on its current route with one remaining bidder seeking a profit from the process, it is throwing that opportunity away.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on what is a hugely important issue for many people in rural Ireland and in my constituency of Kildare South. In my seven years as a Deputy in the House I have spoken on the issue of broadband on a number of occasions. I acknowledge the progress that has been made from when I first spoke on this matter. Many areas of Kildare have high-speed broadband now that did not have it when it started out. In Kildare South we are a mixed constituency of urban and rural. Those pockets of rural south Kildare that do not have the broadband still feel it.

I do not need to tell the Minister about the importance of broadband and how it impacts on people's lives in so many different ways. It impacts on family life and people's ability to share their entertainment together as a family with new means of live streaming television and Netflix and so on. Not having that ability is a huge frustration when one's neighbours have it.

It affects families in an educational context also when the children come home from school. They may have had iPads in school but struggle to do that work at home. It affects small businesses too. While there are some people in houses who have received broadband and do not know themselves since, I am aware of one constituent who needed to download a large file so he drove to a hotel carpark 15 minutes away. He sat in his car while robbing the hotel Wi-Fi on his laptop so he could send or download a large file.

People who work in the agricultural sector and farmers now do all their systems online. In the equine sector people want to buy horses online, for example, and they look at sales in France and other places. They may be selling a foal and cannot follow on with it. If they do not have high-quality broadband, they have to travel to the sales and miss out on the work at home, along with all the work that goes with that.

The ability of people to work from home is also affected. Consider all of the congestion. A lot of this is linked up to the national planning framework. We talk about taking pressure off our roads. Broadband can allow people to work at home and not have to spend all those hours on the M50. They can also have that quality of life element to be home with their kids, collect them from school and help them with their homework. There is a frustration for those people who do not have broadband. Broadband is very much like oxygen. If people have it they do not even realise they are breathing and they do not think about it too much. For those without it, however, it is the biggest frustration in the world. I accept that the scale and nature of the national broadband plan is a massive undertaking. Given the money that is being invested, it is important that the system is future-proofed and that the fibre to the homes is the best system. While my own dwelling has wireless and it does for now, I am aware that the future capacity of the household will not be matched by that. This is why the long-term plan is the right approach.

We talk about the national broadband plan in the future tense, as something to be rolled out and to be delivered and that is coming our way. I recognise the fact that when this Government started there was 50% coverage around the State. We are now up at 71% and by the end of this year we are on target to be at 77%. A lot of that delivery is because of the national broadband plan, and because of it, many of the places in Kildare that did not have broadband a number of years ago have it now. The plan drove the private sector to put in the €2.75 billion worth of private investment in the past five years. I recognise this. Our focus, and the frustration of the Deputies in the House, is now on the remaining percentages. As we work down the numbers, these are the hardest to reach houses that will be the most difficult. Given the scale of the project, it is understandable that the final percentage will be the hardest to reach premises that will take the most time and the most cost to the taxpayer, but at no cost to the dweller. We recognise the importance of this infrastructure. This is on the same scale as the electrification of Ireland in the 1920s. The problem with percentages and projections is that the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment has issued many of these in the past and, for a variety of reasons, some of the projections have slipped. This was long before the Minister's time. This has, however, led to frustrations. I do not for one minute doubt the Minister's conviction and his determination. If there is an issue with the public confidence in the Department, it is that some percentages have slipped in the past.

With regard to Eir pulling out of the plan last week, I do not accept the argument of Opposition parties trying to tell us that the best way to deal with it is to stop, down tools, not do anything else and navel gaze for the next six months or beyond. I also do not accept that we should tell the bidder who stuck with the process all the way through, and who is backed up by SSE, John Laing and some very credible large-scale companies which operate worldwide, that we will walk away from this project now. We are in this now and we have to see it through, but valid questions have to be asked.

I agree with the amended motion on the basis that if the Department were to review the process now, leaving aside the inordinate delay such a review would cause, it would undermine the credibility of the process we are in. It would also lead to a host of other problems. Deputy Martin Kenny can shake his head all he wants but that is a fact. Valid questions, however, must be asked of the Minister and his officials, some of which will be difficult to answer for commercial reasons. Perhaps the Minister will answer them when concluding the debate. While there is no price on this scheme in the public domain, and I would not expect that there would be, I am sure the Minister has a figure in his head and I am sure the Minister for Finance has a figure in terms of the taxpayers' money that we cannot go beyond. I would like some reassurance that state aid rules still apply and that there will be a point at which if Enet looks for too much, it will be told "No". It is not a blank cheque and it should know that. While the Minister cannot publicly talk about a plan B, and I understand that to do so would undermine the process, we must make sure that plan B is a very real and live option. We trust the Minister that it will be there to take out. Rather than stopping a process that people have concerns about, the Minister must drive it on and make it work. He has said he has the conviction to do this, but if it does not happen, then we must have the plan B to look at and to go with. We cannot be held to ransom on this. There are still a lot of cards left to play and we have made huge progress on it.

The 300,000 houses that Eir has committed to do are, I understand, on a contractual basis. The roll-out of that has been a cause of frustration for those who see their neighbours getting it and who do not have it themselves. I welcome the appointment of a broadband officer in every local authority. I have found this very useful. Where broadband was coming on line and where there were local small businesses in rural areas, we were able to contact the broadband officer in the county council and get him or her to make the case back through Eir for that. It has proven a very important aspect where there is an economic ability and where there are jobs involved.

Right now we have delivered 71% high-speed broadband around the State in a project of massive scale the likes of which has not been seen for a generation. By the end of this year we will be at 77%. We are united behind the Minister in driving on to ensure we hit that 100% as soon as possible. We are mindful of the fact that the hardest places to reach will be the ones that will take the most amount of time. The prize is a big one for us. When we talk about the national planning framework and what we will look like in 20 or 30 years, we look at the kind of Ireland we want and the extra one million people who will live in the State. We want 75% of that population growth to be outside of cities. For me as a rural dweller who is surrounded by green fields, the most important element of that is connectivity in transport and in broadband. We talk of addressing both of those issues. The national planning framework looks at 20 years from now and this is big vision stuff. The frustrations of the couple of years of slippage we have had with regard to hitting the 100% target will be looked back upon over a ten or 20 year period. The scale of the project we took on will also be seen. The big prize is the quality of life and the quality of jobs. As I said earlier, this will affect families, small businesses and all the knock-on impacts in the local communities. Parents will be at home in the evening to bring their children to the GAA club and to help out and volunteer. They will be able to use the local shops and support them. They will be involved in the community and voluntary sector in a better way because they can work from home and have a quality of life at home with all the different benefits that brings. It will take pressure off our cities and larger areas, and it will take away the drudgery of the commute that does not need to happen on such a large scale if we have that plan. Connectivity is at the heart of all this. It is at the heart of everything we will talk about in the coming weeks.

We are with the Minister and we are completely committed to seeing the delivery through. We wish the Minister well in this endeavour, but I urge him and his officials behind the scenes to have that plan B and not let us be hostages to fortune in the situation we are in. This is not a situation that anybody wanted to be in, but I completely disagree with any suggestion that we should walk away from that process or throw it up in the air, as it were. From a political perspective, if we were to do that, the very same Opposition parties that asked for it would attack us for doing so. It would be politically expedient for them.

The right thing to do here is to drive on with this process and plan for all eventualities.

I know the Minister, Deputy Naughten, knows my constituency incredibly well. As a representative of a neighbouring constituency, he is familiar with the frustration, upset and grief caused by this issue. I heard him talking earlier about New Inn and Ballymacward, which used to be in the constituency of Galway East but are moving to the Minister's constituency as a result of boundary changes.

They are in an even more important constituency now.

The Minister spoke about the high-speed broadband that people in such areas will receive in the not too distant future. However, it struck me when Deputy Heydon was speaking about the national development plan for the future that such people do not have good road connectivity.

What about the motorway between Gort and Tuam?

They do not have good infrastructure. As the main employment base in this very rural area is agriculture, people have to do a great deal of work online. It will be a great relief for them to know that they are about to get very good broadband infrastructure. This also will be a great improvement for their family lives. It will be a great improvement for their children who are attending college in Galway or Athlone because they will not have to stay in those locations at the weekend. They will be able to come home and it will be possible for them to download and upload their various assignments from home. Up to now, they have had to stay in Galway or Athlone because this infrastructure has not been in place.

When I speak to people in places in my constituency like Kylebrack, Portumna and Headford, they tell me their broadband speeds are not great. They are not reaching out to the entire area. I had better not forget Killimor, which is definitely in the black hole where broadband will never be provided. Even under the existing plan, it was going to be left on the back foot. At the same time, it was going into the town itself. It was going to be delivered in a number of spaces, but it was not going to be delivered out. People like to know where the vision is going. People like to know the timeframes. People do not look for something that cannot be delivered. However, it is certain that people do not like to hear that something is going to be stalled or held up, or that they might never get it. They like to know.

As Deputy Heydon said, broadband is like oxygen to people in rural Ireland. Reference has been made to the national planning framework document. Much of the infrastructure that people need is broadband. Many people are going to work from home. They are not going to commute to Dublin. They will not go into Galway because it does not have a ring road. They will not go into Sligo because of the lack of connectivity in the absence of the completion of the M17-M18. They certainly need fibre-optic broadband coming to their doors. They need to know it is future-proofed. They need to know, just as we did in the case of rural electrification, that the light will not go off after five or ten years. They need to know that broadband will continue to be available so that they can maintain their businesses and other forms of infrastructure.

As Deputy Heydon said, this is about family lives, education, small businesses and people who work. All the Departments, including the Departments of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and Employment Affairs and Social Protection, have gone online. We are encouraging this. Even banking has gone online. Everything has gone online. We are telling people we need them to move with the modern era, but unfortunately they do not have the opportunity to do so because they do not have the broadband or the broadband speeds.

We do not want to stop progress. I would not want to be part of anything that would stop progress. When I knocked on the doors of Galway East, broadband was one of the biggest issues I encountered. People told me they need broadband so that their children who are in education in Galway can come home to Kylebrack or Marble Hill at the weekend and be able to upload their assignments from there. It was costing these parents a fortune to keep their children in Galway at the weekend, but they could not come home because they would be unable to download their materials. The reality of what we are talking about in these statements is the lack of a form of infrastructure that is available in our cities, where it works really well and is taken for granted.

I would like to speak about the upgrading of the fibre broadband that took place in my home town of Portumna, where my office is located. Eighteen months ago, I could not work from my own home or take a phone call in my house. I was living in another black hole. I will admit that the improvement in mobile phone coverage has made a difference to my life. I can work from home. I can spend more time with my children. I do not need to be down in the office at unearthly hours of the night because I have to send an email or something like that. I know the value of this infrastructure, but I also understand the frustration, upset and anguish that people are experiencing at present. There is a fear among the 33% of people who are waiting for broadband that they will not get it. They do not know when they will get it.

I do not want to speak about the history of the past - who bought what, where it all went and everything else like that. I think we need to start talking positively. As Deputy Martin Kenny said, we need to know where this is going, when our sleeves will be rolled up and when the people will get broadband. Broadband is what people are looking for. If it is not delivered into people's houses, it will crucify every single politician the next time we knock on the doors. We are all realistic in this regard. There has to be a real meeting of minds with those involved, including the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, the Department of Finance and the sole remaining bidder. There could be a public private partnership. I am only throwing out there these sorts of things. We have to know how we are going to deliver to the people.

A great deal of education in secondary schools has moved online. Many second-level students are working from e-books. They need to have an opportunity to upload their lesson plans when they go home in the evenings. I think I have set out many of my frustrations in this regard. The big prize in rural Ireland is getting fibre-optic broadband into one's house. I wish the Minister well because I think he has an enormous task. I do not think we can go back to the people without having delivered broadband on this occasion.

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. The Minister, Deputy Naughten, needs to have the support of all parties in this House in his efforts to deliver the national broadband plan. Success is not guaranteed, but I believe the process in which the Minister and the Government are engaged is the correct one. No major infrastructural plan of this nature will have a smooth passage. No plan like this will not hit a bump in the road. A bump on the road should not mean we deviate from the plan. Many speakers in this House are speaking as if the national broadband plan has already failed. It has not failed. It is still alive and kicking. I believe the Minister will deliver on it.

We all know the importance of broadband. When the Minister was in my constituency of Clare earlier today, he spoke about broadband and about the delivery of services that depend on broadband. He referred to the trading online voucher scheme, which enables companies to expand their websites to allow them to trade online, thereby increasing their sales and their workforce and developing their businesses and industries. He also spoke about eLocal, which is a new plan based on broadband that will allow people to buy locally and have their goods delivered locally by An Post. The Minister has outlined these plans in relation to broadband. I believe they show his commitment on delivering broadband to urban and rural Ireland.

The present situation is not what we would wish for. I know it is not what the Minister would wish for. That does not mean the plan has been abandoned, or so badly damaged that it cannot continue. That is not the case. We cannot depend on commercial enterprises to support national infrastructure if they do not wish to do so. This plan should not be thrown offline just because it might not help such enterprises to maximise their profits or does not suit their market forces. At present, we have a competitive bidding process that is continuing.

Fianna Fáil is proposing to stall the process to facilitate an additional review which could last for two months, six months or a year. Where will Fianna Fáil find the experts to advise on this reviewed process? The process already has international experts giving their expertise on how it should be managed.

Where will Fianna Fáil find new experts to give an alternative view? Should an alternative view be given, would that not open the process to litigation from those who have already opted out of the process if the terms and conditions of the broadband plan were to be changed? I do not see that reviewing and delaying is going to add anything to this process. We already have the experts we need and stalling the process is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Deputy Dooley talks about bringing a bullock to the fair and finding there is only one buyer. I think it is more serious when a solution is proposed that throws the baby out with the bathwater, leaving nothing to bring home, neither the money nor the bullock.

Rural Ireland needs to have broadband and should not languish endlessly without it. What Fianna Fáil is proposing would lead to that. What we need now is implementation and we have seen in so many parts of government that plans are produced but fail in the implementation process. We have seen it in our health service and are now seeing it in broadband. We have a process and should continue with it. We should implement it to the maximum and not continually review. We need broadband to 540,000 homes in Ireland. That is the reality of rural Ireland. It is probably going to be the last place broadband is going to be delivered but it must be delivered. The national broadband plan is the way this will satisfy rural Ireland. It is going to be slower than people had anticipated; it is always slower than people want. People in rural Ireland are crying out for broadband but to abandon the national broadband plan because it hits a bump is a very negative way to approach the subject.

If any Minister is going to deliver broadband, it will be Deputy Naughten. During the negotiations for a partnership Government, broadband was a key issue for all rural Deputies, from the Rural Independent Group to the Deputies who are here, to the Minister, Deputy Naughten himself. It was a key area of discussion. Deputy Naughten is the Minister who will deliver this and the broadband plan that he proposes is the method by which it will be delivered. The current state of affairs should be seen as a stimulus to the broadband plan rather than knocking it at every turn. It is concentrating people's minds and certainly has concentrated the mind of the Minister in respect of delivering on this programme. Perhaps that is very good because it has clarified and concentrated people's thinking on the matter.

The plan does lead to uncertainty and anxiety. I hear that every day in my constituency office as most of us do. People are uncertain as to how this programme is going to be delivered and when they see bidders dropping out they feel the process is flawed. It is the commercial interests of those who dropped out that are flawed, rather than the programme. The Minister, Deputy Naughten, should be given every support in delivering this plan. High-speed broadband has to be delivered to a dispersed population and the national broadband plan may be used as a template for other dispersed populations in other countries as a method of excellence on how a broadband plan can be delivered to a dispersed population.

This House should give the Minister every support and freedom to finish his job and should not place obstacles in his way when every bump is encountered.

I am grateful to my party for pushing to have this debate and to get everything on the record about this issue, which is the signal issue in rural Ireland. The post offices and Garda stations are important issues but this is much more important. All the issues have been well played out in this debate. I intend to list the concerns of my constituents. I invited them to address their concerns to me this week. I have heard it all before because many of them have been on to me for some considerable time. I asked them to comment on their positions and feel it would be useful to read the comments into the Dáil record.

Kevin from the Slane area: "very inconsistent". Carol from Rathkenny: "area is very poor". They had 0.5 Mbps with Vodafone through the Eir line and recently moved to mobile broadband with a separate home phone and it is costing a fortune. Jane from Drumree: "no broadband or television". Mary from Rathkenny: "bad broadband".

Gareth in respect of a school in Culmullen: "the fibre stops 500 m from the school". This is all across the place. I mBaile Ghib sa Ghaeltacht, tá an snáithín leathanbhanda ag dul díreach in aice leis an scoil, ach níl leathanbhanda ag an scoil Gaeltachta sin. There is no priority to connect schools. I say that as education spokesman as well. It is absolutely outrageous that schools are not prioritised because at the very least if the children do not have broadband at home surely they should be able to have broadband in their schools. That is right up and down the constituency.

Ciara from Newgrange: "very bad coverage there". Many others from the Dowth and Newgrange area have been in touch as well. Shane from Screen says that Screen seems to be have been given fibre to the home in various patches but there are big gaps between each patch. This makes no sense to me; some are given incredible speeds while their neighbours are barely even getting internet signal. That is the digital divide. It is not just between urban and rural areas but between rural and rural. Some people have it due to the Minister's decision of last year with Eir. The Government, in cahoots with Eir, gave it to some people to try and get them off their backs but they created an awful divide in rural Ireland.

Assumpta, north of Navan, says there is no broadband in Castletown Kilberry, extremely poor mobile broadband only, very expensive and slow. Monica in Cormeen, a rural area in north Meath: "very bad mobile and broadband coverage". Again, there are comments in respect of Dowth and Newgrange from Margaret. Constituents just outside the town of Kilcock say there is no broadband and they are paying over the top for a very limited satellite Internet service. Mobile coverage is a joke as well. One constituent tried to get a landline but was unsuccessful. If they had a proper landline, Sky would give them broadband. They are only a couple of miles outside Kilcock; it is ridiculous. Liam is in the Kilcloon area, where today they had a "no wash, no drink" water notice from Irish Water. Everybody puts it up on social media but in Kilcloon, which is just a few miles outside the town of Maynooth, a lot of people would not have had the broadband to look at WhatsApp, Twitter or Facebook to find out about a very urgent health situation today where children suffered serious burns as a result of negligence that has been alleged on the part of Irish Water.

Linda in the Kiltale area: "Eir has stopped fibre broadband halfway up in Derrypatrick, Drumree in Kiltale". It is not right that the other people are suffering bad Wi-Fi. Rosemary says that Eir fibre is being rolled out in two directions towards her house but it stopped short of hers and a lot of others in the area. At present, they can get fixed line broadband at a speed of 2 Mbps. It is a joke so they have opted for a very limited 100 GB very expensive mobile broadband which really only lasts 20 days. It is ridiculous. It is impossible to afford to pay for that for longer than 20 days in the month. That is what is happening. People are so frustrated at this digital divide. Colette tells me there is no broadband. I know this. I know all these issues but it is important to read them into the record. There is no broadband in the Kilbeg area. They are paying a fortune for satellite broadband with mediocre coverage.

Peter Whelan from Slane is a man who featured on "Nationwide" recently in respect of his organic pig farm where he produces the best of bacon. I bought my Christmas ham off Peter this year as I usually do. He lives just outside the village of Slane. He has no broadband whatsoever. He is trying to run a business with a mobile phone that only works in one corner of his house. This is a man who has been featured on television, who is part of the Meath food series and the Boyne Valley food series where we are really trying to promote the best natural food products that we can get. The food is not processed very much but really is the best of stuff. He can only get mobile coverage in a corner of his house and is trying to sell products and organise things. The utility company is currently putting in new cables, but only to the main road at the end of their lane at Rathmaiden in Slane.

Maria tells me the story of Scoil Ultain Naofa i mBaile Ghib sa Ghaeltacht. Tá an cás sin luaite agam cheana agus tá sé sin ag tarlú ar fus na ceantair tuaithe. Orla tells me in respect of Killeen in Dunsany that broadband is being rolled out to the first three houses. The majority of the houses are not being serviced.

Catherine, who lives south of Slane, tells me that she lives near the main road and has difficult traffic to navigate, but she has no broadband. She can see all the traffic passing by every day of the week. What can she do?

David says that he has Eir landline and broadband which costs €62 a month for 3 Mbps. Eir mobile costs him €45 per month for 1 to two Mbps. He cannot cancel because of contracts. His mobile phone, on the Three network, gets over 10 Mbps and he only pays €20 per month. He lives in the Duleek area, and says that the service is a joke. In my own case I have to say that the Three mobile coverage is better than what Eir is providing via landlines.

Aidan in Dowth says there is no broadband in Dowth, Newgrange or Knowth, which are world heritage sites. My good friend, Michael Lynch from Corboggy, in Moynalty says there is very poor broadband there and in all the townlands in the vicinity. That is a CLÁR area and is a rural area that I do not want to see forgotten about. We talk about rural and urban divides. We are talking about areas such as Corboggy, CLÁR areas, very rural areas in the north of my constituency. We are also talking about areas just outside Drogheda, Maynooth and Kilcock which have poor broadband.

Sarah tells me that she cannot get broadband in Bellewstown. Another constituent says that there is no broadband at all in Woodtown and that the only option is a plug-in stick. Grainne says that she has a family of six, with four children under six years old. They live in Kilcloon, seven kilometres from the university town of Maynooth. Their house is one of 14 on a one kilometre long lane, and six of the houses have received e-fibre broadband. That kind of divide on a lane is isolating people and is causing terrible hardship for them. It is hardship for professional people such as Grainne who I am sure would like to work from home occasionally but cannot.

Keena tells me that she works from home and tries to run an e-commerce business. She says that it is incredibly difficult because her broadband is so unreliable. She lives only one kilometre off the Trim Road at Batterstown, and e-fibre only reaches the first few houses on the road. Claire tells me that she lives in Ballymacall in the south of the county. Eir told her that it could not provide her with standard broadband in her home because it is at the end of the line and the signal is lost for weeks at a time. She says there is a good signal at the gate but it weakens the further up the drive she goes. Deirdre tells me that Kilcloon, Batterstown and Culmullen all need a better service. These are areas which are very close to Dublin. These are not places like Connemara or the Burren down in Clare. This is very close to Dublin, and we still cannot get it right.

Nicky tells me that he cannot get any sort of broadband as his home is too far from the main exchange in Dunboyne. Even Imagine, which has tried to be innovative, is not an option because of the trees around his home. Vicky tells me that she can get a maximum of 2 Mb in Longtown in the south of Meath, in the Culmullen area. She says that it is a disgrace because there are more than 20 houses on this road. The fibre roll-out stops at Mulhussey on the Maynooth side and also on the Kilcock side, totally skipping her area. When she contacted Imagine, she found out that the mast was full so there was no decent alternative option.

Justine says that she lives on a road between the main Trim road between Batterstown and Kennedy Road in the Dunboyne area, at the back of Woodpark Stud. She says that fibre is running down the Trim road and is being started on Kennedy Road. Despite that, her road, which is in the middle and has approximately ten houses, is being ignored. Charles, who is a veterinary professional, tells us that he cannot do school homework or projects with kids and cannot work from home. He says that he has relocated a business from the area because of Internet issues.

I believe it was a useful exercise to set out the concerns of my constituents, representing a broad cross-section of opinion, from very isolated areas to very highly populated rural areas. They cannot get the broadband they need. It is a crying shame, and it is an indictment on the Government that the process has gone this way. I wish the Minister well, because my constituents and I want broadband, but the Government is going to have to get its act together on this issue.

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and to have these extra hours. What was allowed last night on the Private Members motion, which I know was limited to two hours, could not do justice to the amount of concern that people in the House have about broadband. It is a fundamental issue for all of Ireland at this stage. It is a fundamental issue for the development of our island as a whole and to ensure we have proper development. We talk about regional development, developing the regions and ensuring the population is dispersed throughout the island, and we have all kinds of grandiose notions about it. This is a fundamental issue.

I have spoken to colleagues who have travelled quite extensively throughout the world, to parts of Peru, Chile, Brazil and Argentina and even the remote islands off the coast of Brazil. In small towns where there might not even be running water, in every hostel there was Wi-Fi and Internet access. It was the same in Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. We look at ourselves as a first world country and there is also a lot of talk about booming economies and expanding populations, but we are in the dark with regard to high-speed broadband. Many people tell us they cannot continue their business. An agriculture consultant has told me it takes up to an hour to send an email. That is not sustainable where the person is living. It is not sustainable for that person to work from home. We are not empowering experts in their fields such as agricultural consultants who are highly trained and educated and articulate in how they deliver their services.

A Deputy from Clare was scoring some point with Deputy Dooley on this issue. The reality is that broadband has failed our communities. I was a Member of the previous Dáil as the Fianna Fáil spokesperson on communications. I was here in December 2013 when Pat Rabbitte sat in front of us and just before the local elections in 2014 there was a massive announcement that broadband would be delivered. We almost thought broadband would be delivered before we went to bed that night. Alex White took over as Minister, and in every debate and every five or six weeks at Question Time we were told the Government was waiting for state aid or EU approval, that the tender documents were ready and all the paperwork had been done on the Irish side but the Government was waiting for all kinds of dates. If we check the Dáil record it was suggested that this would be done in the middle of 2015 and then the end of 2015. It was all about dates as to when we would have a programme in place for places such as Kiskeam and Banteer and other places throughout my constituency that do not have access to high-speed broadband.

Young people doing their homework at every level on the education spectrum do not have access to broadband. It absolutely makes sure they are second-class citizens. We have seen the Eir programme being delivered and we have seen places in Banteer in particular where there are six or seven houses where the services are being cut. We have tried everything to get it extended. We have seen it in Kiskeam where there are almost 20 houses at the cut-off point, and it cannot or will not be extended. High-speed broadband is not being delivered to these communities.

There is a massive social divide. Commentators have been looking at it as a rural-urban divide but it is not. There are places 15 miles from O'Connell Street having serious difficulty with getting broadband.

People have spoken about the telecoms industry and telephones in the 1970s and early 1980s and the ESB in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s when electricity was brought to every corner of the country, whether one was in the remotest part or the most thickly populated part. This is a fundamental issue for us. I spoke about 2013. That is five years ago. We are no nearer to getting universal access to broadband than we were five years ago. People will say there are a range of plans, agendas and documents, but I do not believe we are getting anywhere near universal broadband.

If we could help our citizens get universal access to broadband, whether they are living in remote parts of Cork North-West, urban centres or whatever, it would help enable us to have balanced regional development.

Companies at the cutting edge of technology are generating massive amounts of products, such as pumps and so on, and are exporting them to Scotland, the rest of the United Kingdom and mainland Europe. They have subsidiary offices in Dublin. They are paying €800 a month for a broadband service in north Cork and €50 a month for a broadband service in Dublin. That is simply not sustainable. The sooner we stand up and admit that this plan is not working and that we should go back to brass tacks, the better.

Many people spoke about the Eircom poles. There is one basic piece of infrastructure this country still holds, that is, the ESB networks. Every single corner of the country has proper electricity poles and they have been checked and maintained thoroughly. The Vodafone-ESB joint venture in 2012 or 2014 was spoken about. At the time I was shown the fibre-optic cable that would be put on those lines to deliver broadband services. That infrastructure is in place.

I genuinely believe that the State will have to move in, and that a new semi-State company should be formulated to deliver this plan. We have all kinds of agendas, legal advice and so on but the basic point is that either we are concerned about delivering regional development and providing a broadband service, which is as important for today's farmer, housewife, children going to school and everyone else, or we are not. There are very few people who are not bringing some of their work home to do in the evening or who try to get information late at night on whatever services they are working on. The most basic need we could meet for them is to give them access to broadband services. Otherwise, we are disenfranchising people and making them second-class citizens.

There was fine talk in the debate last night and we had the argy-bargy because Fianna Fáil put down this motion and challenged that there should be a review. God forbid that the world would fall in because we were going to have a review of what has now failed. We should stand up and say that we are not delivering broadband, the process has failed us so we should now look at how best we can avoid another five years of talk about it because five years have already passed.

Deputy Rabbitte spoke earlier about getting basic mobile phone coverage. In some parts of the country, there is not basic mobile phone coverage. Technology has developed greatly in 20 years but the same pockets of the country that were without mobile phone coverage 20 years ago are without mobile phone coverage today. What did the representatives of the telecommunications industry and the telecoms regulator say when they came before the committee three or four years ago? They said there was more data now on phones and it is more difficult to pick up a signal. If someone had the most basic phone 20 years ago and they were not able to get a signal in parts of north Cork, the same basic phone would not get the signal today. That is not advancing our case.

We have to be realistic. We are facing a massive challenge. We can have all the public relations and fine talk about this issue but we are at a juncture. In early 2018 we are commemorating many great achievements but I believe we will be judged on how we deliver broadband to enable every one of our citizens to continue their work and live their lives whether it is in north west Cork, Dublin, Meath or any other part of the country. We are totally disadvantaged in that regard. In terms of this debate, we will be looking for more time because all of us have more to say on the issue. We should start from scratch and admit that this process is a complete and absolute failure.

I call Deputy Scanlon but I will ask him to move the Adjournment in one minute, or less.

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this issue. I met people from an English company in Sligo this morning who are prepared to set up a business in my home town of Ballymote. The Minister is very familiar with it; he knows the area very well. Unfortunately, we do not have the broadband service to allow this company to start up. It is a small company. We are looking at eight to ten jobs. We have the premises but, unfortunately, we do not have the broadband.

It would be very easy for me, or anybody else, to come in here tonight and criticise the Minister but I will not do that. The Minister set out on a programme. Unfortunately, we had three companies tendering for this contract. Two of them, despite what I am sure were the Minister's best efforts, have pulled out and we are down to one. It is easy for those companies to pull out, particularly Eir, because it has cherry-picked the best and easiest to manage people who need broadband in terms of cities and so on.

The Dáil adjourned at 11.15 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 8 February 2018.
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