but high speed rural broadband seems an excellent idea to me. It would mean that parts of the country which are today almost cut off from the modern economy could become realistic locations for many types of employment. No manufacturing MNC is ever likely to set up in Longford, but many services business could locate anywhere with adequate broadband.
I agree with this to a degree. I believe every 'population centre' should have access to reasonable speed broadband. Lets define a population centre as 500 people living in a village. This would cover a reasonable percentage of villages within the country.
This would enable most villages in Ireland support a level of service businesses, and potentially breath some life back into rural Ireland
But this is a very different proposition to every house in Ireland being able to support high speed broadband. The cost of rolling out high speed broadband to every premises in Ireland is massive, especially when you look at the amount of one off housing in rural Ireland. Where my parents live in East Galway (for example), there are 6 houses in a 2km stretch to the one village (would not make the 500 cut) and 11 houses in a 3km stretch on the other side which would make the 500 person cut. This is a 5km stretch of road, with 17 houses on it, some back off the road down by roads. The cost of rolling out and maintaining fibre to these houses must be massive, and the take-up might be 25% if they are lucky.
If this is to be done, then there should be an increase in the levys associated with one off housing to support the rollout of services such as fibre to them, or an increase in the property tax to support these services in rural areas. Urban housing costs a premium because of the services available to them, as this is paid when buying the house, the associated stamp duty and ongoing in property tax.
I am all for supporting industry in rural Ireland (coming from there myself), but it has to be viable. If I have to travel 5km down the road to get to an office pod to support a business venture, then that is not a long commute in rural Ireland. You see a few of these popping up in Dublin now, so surely they can pop up elsewhere in Ireland. I accept some people want the flexibility to work from home and set up a business from there, but its not always possible. Maybe those people can pay to have fibre broadband installed from their local population centre, supported by a grant from the local Enterprise Office or similar?