I want to raise the issue of broadband provision in rural areas and the great urban-rural divide that exists in this respect. A report issued today by switcher.ie, a price comparison website, shows broadband speeds in rural Ireland are 36 times slower than in towns and cities. This is a serious issue. Longford and Monaghan, to name but a few, were listed as black spots.

To give a practical example of this divide, downloading a two-hour film in Dublin would take approximately six minutes, whereas it could take two and a half hours in Monaghan.

That gives an example of the challenges that businesses and individuals face every day. The sad thing is that the gap is getting bigger. A quarter of households have broadband speeds below the Government's guidelines.

We have been told that the broadband issue will be fully solved by 2020 or 2022, which is little consolation for businesspeople and families in rural areas. The biggest obstacle to job creation in rural areas is lack of access to broadband. I plead with the Leader to ask the Minister to come to the House to address this serious issue so that rather than having to pack their suitcases to leave, people will find a future for themselves and their families in rural Ireland where they can grow up and live and work for as long as they wish.

I support Senator Bacik's call for the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality to come to the House to discuss legislation on domestic violence. I commend Safe Ireland and the other organisations that organised the conference on domestic violence but unfortunately I could not attend. It would be timely for the Tánaiste to come here as we come up to the 15 days of action opposing violence against women.

Today we have seen another report on the lack of broadband in rural areas. The report by the comparison website, switcher.ie, has confirmed what many of us who live and work in rural areas have known for a long time, namely, that broadband coverage and connection speeds are wholly inadequate in rural areas. Drimnagh in Dublin has a connection speed that was up to 36 times faster than that in rural areas. The national broadband plan was launched in 2012. Recently we learned that the procurement contract will not be signed until 2017. However, the Minister recently failed to confirm the 2017 date, meaning that the completion date may now be put back to 2022. Every delay in the roll-out of the plan prevents small businesses from setting up or expanding and denies real people opportunities.

To concentrate the wonderful minds in the Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil Government, it is now time for businesses that do not have the minimum 100 Mbps to get an exemption from paying rates. The economic apartheid caused by leaving whole swathes of Ireland, including small towns, without this essential means of communication is devastating. In my case it takes the best part of six months to secure even the basic communication tools from my Mayo office.

The severe social exclusion imposed on individuals, families and communities as a result of not having adequate broadband is intolerable. Government services and information are blocked from reaching the population of rural areas because they cannot access the Internet. It means that people cannot reliably access online banking or pay bills online. This is important in a climate where many utilities have almost entirely switched to online payment systems.

We want immediate action on rural broadband. We need the national broadband plan to be commenced urgently. It should start at the remotest rural areas and work towards the towns. I call for an urgent debate on the issue of social and economic apartheid as a result of the deprivation caused by inadequate broadband speeds in rural areas.

I join Senators Gallagher and Conway-Walsh in addressing the broadband question. Some Senators may have heard on "Today with Seán O'Rourke" a businessperson from Keenagh in County Longford moving out of their current premises and moving very significant jobs from the village of Keenagh owing to the absence of broadband. In Cavan and Monaghan there are villages and whole tracts without adequate broadband. I propose to the Leader that we should have a constant monitoring of this. It is one of the most current and immediate issues we face.

We should debate it regularly as a stock-take, so to speak, and invite the relevant people to discuss it. Will the Leader arrange for this soon?

I have constantly raised the need for the decentralisation of jobs and a regionalisation of inward investment. The only silver lining to the Brexit dark cloud is that we can now do that, but only if all rural areas have broadband. We must bring high-speed broadband to all towns and villages. It is the country's starkest infrastructural deficit at the moment. Will the Cathaoirleach and the Leader ensure that it is placed at the top of the agenda? We discuss Seanad reform constantly, but what people really want is Seanad relevance, and nothing could be more relevant than addressing this great deficit.