Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and his officials for attending today. The point I have made in the media a couple of times when addressing this topic is that the rolling out of broadband is regularly compared to the electrification of Ireland. When electrification occurred, people at the time thought it was simply to bring light into their houses. Nobody could have envisaged the many uses for electricity down the line. To my mind, high-speed broadband — fibre broadband — is exactly the same. We will have uses that will be crucial to how we live our lives in the very near future but that we cannot yet envisage. We are very quickly moving from a position in which high-speed fibre broadband is seen as a luxury. It is becoming a necessity. Just as we would not consider living in a house without electricity, very soon we will not dream of living in a house without high-speed broadband. Therefore, we are not far off from a position in which, if the deficit in rural Ireland is not addressed, those concerned will move out of rural areas into larger towns and cities where they can access the service. This will have a knock-on impact on everything we are trying to do to achieve balanced regional development. It fundamentally boils down to whether one believes in a person's inherent right to live in rural areas or a rural one-off house. I believe people in rural areas are entitled to the same standard of living as those in our larger urban conurbations.

Could the Minister outline the role of his Department in the early part of this process in respect of the procurement element? In the term of the Government in question, did the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform agree with the approach of the then Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Mr. Pat Rabbitte, on the procurement process as it went to Cabinet and later when his successor, Mr. Alex White, proposed the gap-funded model?