COMMENTS BY Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan that he anticipates a demand for high-speed broadband were “really maddening”, according to Fine Gael’s Noel Coonan.
The North-Tipperary TD said it was especially maddening for his region of the midwest “which has the highest unemployment in the country”. In the three years he had been a TD, “I have heard the Minister pontificate about what he is doing in terms of broadband and set targets which he has consistently failed to meet.”
Mr Ryan insisted that “any independent analysis of what has happened in the past 2½-three years since I have been in office” showed “that broadband numbers have gone from 600,000 to 1.4 million or so. That is a fact.”
Mr Coonan had asked about progress in the “one-stop shop” for broadband structures and the Minister said the context for the proposal “is the anticipated increase in demand for high-speed broadband into the future”.
Mr Coonan found the comment “maddening” and pointed out that the IDA and Shannon Development “have stated clearly that the most significant barrier to job creation in the midwest is the lack of a high-speed broadband system. It is simply not there. The networks have been in the ground for years and it is frustrating for people. When will we see those networks connected and a one-stop shop?”
The Minister “could have given this answer last September. I do not want to listen to the same story from the Minister next September.”
Mr Ryan said the competition he was “pursuing” between the cable, fixed-line, mobile, WiMax and satellite providers “is the best way to drive down prices and drive up speeds. That has been shown in market after market and it is working here.”
He added: “The likes of the cable company investing in new cable networks will give 50 megabit download speeds. WiMax deployment here is ahead of any other European country.” But Mr Coonan said “the Minister did not give us targets or dates” and added that “broadband penetration in Ireland is the second-worst in the EU for firms and small businesses”.
