Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

——a flexibility to help meet our renewable energy targets. We are on target for 50% renewables next year, a target set for 2010. It is bringing down prices and creating jobs. The ESB strategy allows for 3,700 direct jobs and several thousand more indirectly. These are real jobs in a real economy which is recovering and which is providing the opportunities. We have equal necessity to develop broadband infrastructure and it is crucial that the regulatory system allows investment in next generation broadband to occur.

We have doubled our broadband numbers in the past two years. We have a range of different schemes such as bringing high speed broadband to schools and a national broadband scheme covering rural areas. It is ahead of what is being proposed in the UK or America. They are talking about what they want to do but we are delivering. It is being delivered on the ground. It is a good aspiration and it is the right thing to do——

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