I will try to explore with the Taoiseach solutions to the broadband crisis that has existed for years throughout rural Ireland and in particular in my constituency of Cork South-West. High-speed fibre broadband is a dream for everyone in rural Ireland, which has turned into a nightmare. It has turned out to be a shameful legacy of Taoiseach after Taoiseach in this country. The current Taoiseach has two and a half years to turn this around. His leadership of the country will be measured in rural Ireland by many issues in this term but broadband will be top in most people's minds.

The €3 billion national broadband plan, NBP, was signed last year. Many doubt if it will work, but that is something I have no wish to dwell on too much today. What I want to dwell on is a solution. We have it under our fingertips. For once, it may not be Eir, Vodafone, Three Ireland or any of the national operators. The solution to almost 100% of our problems is our local private wireless operators. I will offer an example that, if worked on, can be a solution. The Taoiseach could oversee this solution to the broadband problems in this country in his term in office. One of these companies is DigitalForge, a fixed wireless broadband provider in west Cork. It has been providing a service for 16 years and employs eight people. It has provided a service in this time to thousands of homes and businesses in the county of Cork as well as to 60 schools. This business has expanded without any State assistance whatsoever during that time. The company has not increased the price of its standard package, which provides a 70 MB service, in 16 years. The European minimum specification has been 30 MB. We should remember the company started out 16 years ago offering a 1 MB service. It has grown and continues to grow. The company's network is resilient. In the recent Storm Ophelia the longest outage some customers experienced was three hours while customers relying on the traditional hardwired system waited weeks for phone and broadband lines to be restored.

The State sets the price for radio frequencies and by pricing these high, there is no allowance for competition, the recent closure of a Cork wireless operator, permaNET, being an example. The licence goes to the highest bidder. The State does not allocate the spectrum for smaller operators. Prices are in the millions and smaller operators do not stand a chance.

DigitalForge provided broadband to the Mealagh Valley north of Bantry when no other broadband provider could or would help. It provided broadband to Baltimore and when Eir came to town later to rich pick customers, almost all of DigitalForge's customers stayed with it because, as they said, they had a top-class service and somebody at the end of the phone who would immediately set about resolving any problems.

The areas I have spoken of have benefited from having DigitalForge in west Cork. Gaggan in Bandon, Kilmacsimon in Innishannon, Sandycove in Kinsale and other areas of west Cork have little or no broadband. Despite of all of the efforts to get the larger operators to deliver extra capacity, nothing has been delivered. Will the Taoiseach sit down with the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment and try to create a level playing pitch by developing a two-tier solution? I do not mean in any way to disrupt the national broadband dream, which can work away behind the scenes. Rather, I ask that private wireless operators be given some small State assistance and recognition for being the only operators who can deliver broadband to well over 90% of rural Ireland. In some cases, they provided 100% of the broadband to areas of rural Ireland for the first time.

I thank the Deputy for that enlightening presentation. I have no issue with sitting down with the Minister and discussing the issues he raised. He might forward to me some further details on the company and its work. That said, the allocation of spectrum is a matter for proper procurement processes and so on. It is not a process with which we can readily interfere. If it is the Deputy's contention that the mechanism unduly disadvantages smaller operators, that is something that can be considered. The national development plan is not one that will be working behind the scenes, as the Deputy suggested. The programme for Government commits to an accelerated roll-out of the national broadband plan if that is possible. The objective is to deliver it faster than within the seven-year period specified.

Work between the Department and the company is ongoing. There is still some work to be done in terms of improving on the timelines around the national broadband plan. Towards the latter end of this year, the Government would like to be in a position to have the full assessment and costings available in regard to the idea of proceeding faster with the national broadband plan, if that is possible. I am aware of local initiatives, such as the digital hub in Skibbereen, which is a very good example of collaboration between private companies and the public interest, and incorporating a degree of philanthropy. That example proved particularly effective in terms of being a catalyst for the generation of jobs and companies locating near the hub and in Skibbereen more widely. I do not disagree with the Deputy about the significance of broadband and connectivity in respect of rural Ireland and enabling economic recovery in rural Ireland. It is an essential prerequisite to enabling rural Ireland to fulfil its economic potential into the future.

The headline of the Southern Star last week stated "Our poor broadband will deter re-locators". That is the situation we have experienced in west Cork. I did my best to steer away from the national broadband plan in my initial question as I do not want this to be the rock on which the Taoiseach will perish, like his predecessors. A few short months ago, the former Minister, Deputy Bruton, agreed to allow ComReg to give extra capacity to broadband and mobile phone companies to increase capacity in rural communities due to the increased numbers of people working at home because of Covid-19. As far as I am aware, not one community in west Cork has had increased capacity.

Who is monitoring ComReg? Is it a law unto itself? At a conservative estimate, some 100,000 customers nationally are serviced by fixed wireless operators, which get no recognition from the State for what they do. With Government support these numbers could double or treble. The national scheme is spending €5,000 per household to ensure services are available. Small communities have no broadband and little chance of getting it for years, if ever.

It is not financially viable to build infrastructure for them. If 20 houses in a village are without broadband, the NBP will pay €100,000 to get these homes serviced whereas a fixed wireless provider could do it for a fraction of that figure and in a significantly better timeframe. The solutions offered by fixed wireless access operators are environmentally friendly. They do not build huge masts or run miles of cables across thousands of poles and they frequently use green technologies such as wind and solar.

Will the Taoiseach consider creating this type of solution for many homes with little or no broadband in west Cork?

Many of these issues were looked at well in advance of the NBP. The Department is pretty clear in terms of the primacy of the national broadband plan as the route to creating proper broadband connectivity across the entirety of Ireland, particularly those areas that are not commercially viable. I have no doubt the new Minister is open to any innovative suggestions or proposals that would accelerate provision and enable particularly remote locations to have access to high connectivity. This would facilitate remote working, which is an objective of the Government and the programme for Government, and, as the recent Covid-19 experience has illustrated, is something that could be made more permanent in our workplace as an option and in enabling people to spend part of their week working from home. That would be economically beneficial to certain communities and localities but connectivity is needed to enable that. That is something we all share in the House.