18-month wait for rural broadband
ISOLATED rural communities in County Wicklow could have to wait until 2019 to have broadband rolled out.
That’s according to Fianna Fáil’s Deputy Pat Casey who criticised the rollout as being ‘painfully slow’ and having a negative impact on many homes and businesses in the meantime.
He expressed disappointment in an announcement by Minister Denis Naughten that he does not expected any progress to be made in connecting 542,000 households in rural areas to a quality service in the next 18 months.
‘In Wicklow there are 63,772 premises with 44,887 being commercial operator zones leaving 18,885 without any certain knowledge of when broadband will be made available,’ he said.
Deputy Casey said that Eir will be priorotising connection of commercial premises for the next 77 weeks.
‘Why is it that the State’s work in connecting these 542,000 households cannot take place in tandem with Eir’s activities? The ability of the State to meet its original pledge to deliver broadband to over half a million household and businesses is now shrouded in doubt. What does Minister Naughten expect them to do in the meantime? The NBP was supposed to be completed by 2016, yet it’s now clear that it may be 2023, at the very earliest, that they are connected,’ he said.
Deputy Casey said that this delay will hold Wicklow back, particularly the more rural parts of the county.
‘Rural Wicklow is suffering, and is unable to compete with the major cities and large towns. Broadband can be a lifeline for these communities, but Minister Naughten just doesn’t get it. Businesses are losing customers, farmers cannot access services that they can only available online, young people cannot access supports that will help their education, and all this Government can do is pass the buck and jump on the coat-tails of private commercial operation such as Eir and Imagine.’
He took a swipe at the Government and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s pledge to support ‘the people who get up early in the morning to go to work’ and said that ‘unfortunately, whether it’s early morning or late at night, the people of rural Ireland can’t access the broadband they need to expand their businesses and live their lives.’
‘Is it the case that the Minister and his officials have been too slow at drawing up the necessary tender documents, or worse, the Minister isn’t confident that he has the funding required to deliver the National Broadband Plan? Either way, it leaves Wicklow homeowners and business people anxiously waiting for the delivery of high speed broadband. By effectively extending the start date for connecting these 542,000 homes by at least 18 months, the Fine Gael/Independent Government is passing responsibility on to the next Minister for Communications as his term of office will likely be up by then,’ Deputy Casey concluded.