Work is underway to ensure Fingal homes and businesses will be connected under the Government’s plan for high speed broadband, Fine Gael TD, Alan Farrell, has said.
Deputy Farrell said: “Homes and businesses in Fingal will be connected to high speed broadband under the Government’s National Broadband Plan, for which survey work is underway despite the challenges of the pandemic.
The Broadband Connection Points (BCPs) initiative will see publicly accessible sites in rural and isolated parts of Fingal provided with a temporary high-speed broadband connection by National Broadband Ireland (NBI), the company contracted to deliver the NBP. Many points have been connected already.
As part of the work to connect homes and businesses to high speed broadband, surveying is underway or completed in areas around Fingal. Broadband connection points have been completed at Fingal Ravens GAA Club and Man O War GAA Club, while another connection point is planned at Newbridge House & Farm.
“Approximately 10,000 homes in Dublin will benefit from the roll out of these projects and will make a marked improvement to the quality of services.
“This is great progress and is so important for the economic and social development of Fingal as part of Fine Gael’s vision for balanced regional development across the county.
“Rural broadband is so essential to this vision. It will allow enterprise to flourish in Fingal and ensure people have increased options to live and work here.
“This why in the last Government, Fine Gael began the largest and most significant investment ever in rural Ireland through our National Broadband Plan. Broadband is coming to every town, village and community across the country. This will take time, but it is positive that preparatory work is underway in Fingal.
Deputy Farrell continued: “Not one of the other political parties supported Fine Gael’s broadband plan and they sought to block it at every turn. There are remote and rural areas across Fingal where commercial providers will not invest. If Fine Gael didn’t persist with this plan, too many people and businesses in Fingal would have been left behind by the opposition.
“Since the pandemic, the parties that opposed Fine Gael’s Broadband Plan are belatedly coming around to the importance of remote working.
“Fine Gael’s vision for The National Broadband Plan (NBP) was for it to enable new ways of working and exploit the huge benefits that remote working offers to employers, employees and society more generally.
“This was a crucial part of our strategy to ensure balanced regional development across Ireland, long before the pandemic. But COVID-19 has shown us the demand for this is growing.
“The pandemic has changed the way in which we live, work and interact with each other. Covid has shown us that location is not as important anymore, connectivity is what counts.”
Deputy Farrell concluded: “Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, it is great to see the installation of high speed broadband already underway in Limerick and surveying works also underway nationwide over the winter months. While Covid-19 might have delayed us, it will not stop us and Fine Gael is determined that 1.1m people in 544,000 homes, 695 schools, 54,000 farms and 44,000 business in the country will be online under the NBP so that no part of the country is left behind.”