Over the past ten years, the national broadband plan has been spoken about, and last year the Tánaiste and other Ministers signed the new contract, which is welcome. The questions with the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, we were dealing with prior to Leaders' Questions were about broadband. Work on this has started in various parts of the country. Some people will say the main contractors got a heavy price or a good price, and it probably is, but I would always say that we need to get broadband in rural Ireland and that is the bottom line.

Worryingly, over recent days in different parts of the country we have heard there have been stand-offs with the polers, who are the people who put up poles. Some of them are back on site again today. Ironically, the first thing that is done in going from pole to pole is to clip the top of hedgerows, the 6% of which we left out of our climate mitigation plans, to make sure the wire does not get cut. Unfortunately, 80% of the contractors throughout the country have pulled off site. They tell us the surveying has been done wrong and the way it has been added up is completely wrong compared with the other providers we have in the country, and we all know them. This is bread-and-butter stuff and there are already stand-offs. There are some parts of the country where a few contractors are working. Other than this, they have all pulled off site. If this has cropped up already, at the beginning of the roll-out of broadband, what measures has the Government put in place to make sure there is oversight of what is going on?

From what I can see, we seem to have a main contractor that does not seem to have a lot of gear or machinery and subcontracts it down, and then it is subcontracted down again and then subcontracted down again. Is there anything in place to make sure the ordinary contractors at the bottom of this ladder are protected and get the proper price for the work they are doing, or is this a big figure for broadband and screw everyone down along? What has the Government put in place to make sure these people are protected?

I thank the Deputy. I am genuinely not aware of the dispute with the polers that the Deputy has mentioned. I will see the Minister, Deputy Ryan, this afternoon and I will mention to him that it was raised in the Dáil and he might be able to inform me, or inform the Deputy directly, as to what is the difficulty.

As the Deputy knows, the contract is given to National Broadband Ireland and it will employ and is employing subcontractors to do a lot of the work on the ground. There is an oversight mechanism in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications which is responsible for communications networks to make sure this is project managed, driven and delivered. We would expect that if the main contractor, NBI, is getting paid by the taxpayer, it should honour any agreements it has with subcontractors to make sure the money goes down the line. It should honour any contracts and commitments it makes with subcontractors, so we would expect that to happen.

I think it is good that the national broadband plan is now a reality. I remember being in that school in Wicklow and being present for the signing of the contract and I remember somebody saying to me that despite all the controversy, I would never regret the day the contract was signed. I do not think we will regret it. I think it will come in cheaper than the price, by the way. It is the reverse of the children's hospital contract. It can go down and it cannot go up, so I think it will actually come in at a lower cost than the €3 billion which was quoted at the time.

As the Deputy said, the work is now under way and it is going to connect 1 million people across rural Ireland to high-speed broadband and over 500,000 homes, farms and businesses. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is how essential this service is because people living in rural Ireland, running a business, running a farm, trying to access education or attending college from home, need this service. It is as essential as electricity, water or landline phone lines in the old days. I think we made the right investment and it will pay off.

I thank the Tánaiste. I fully agree. I am a supporter of broadband right around rural Ireland, especially with Covid, given the number of people who are able to work from home. The quicker we can roll it out, the better and if we could roll it out twice as fast I would be in full support of that. I want to be very clear on that.

The Tánaiste said it may go down in price and it is great if it does. The problem at the moment is that there are subcontractors who have basically gone away from it because they could not survive or make money on the rates they were being offered. The surveys done seem to be ludicrous compared to what has already been done with providers each year going back the years where broadband has already been done. There are standards that are needed. There is no point cutting something 3 inches below if we have to go at it again next year. Certain standards are needed to make sure that we only have to go along, say, every five years.

The way this is starting at the moment, I worry about it. This is the beginning of it. Funnily enough, the hedge cutter that goes along is the beginning of putting up the wire that will bring this to every home in the country. If we cannot get that simple bit right, and if we have contractors who are walking off because of the prices involved, there is something seriously wrong.

I will give the Tánaiste the information later. I ask him to talk to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, to make sure there is oversight for these people. They are entitled to make a living as well.

I thank the Deputy. If he can give me that information later, I will be happy to speak to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, about it in the afternoon. Given what I have learned in the last week, I will make sure that whatever the Deputy gives me is somehow scanned onto some sort of system so nobody can accuse him of being informal or something like that.

I did not accuse the Tánaiste of anything.