Where is the accountability?
The revelation this week that close to €30m was spent on government broadband projects in the northeast region - including the installation of Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) in Cavan, Kingscourt, Cootehill and Bailieboro - and that there has been no takeup in some of these towns is shocking.
What's perhaps even more alarming is that the full detail of connections - of which there are none to the new high-speed broadband network in Kingscourt or Bailieboro and just one in Cootehill - was not highlighted at the October meeting of Cavan County Council.
It is outrageous that the CEO of the company responsible for operating and maintaining the MANS came to address our elected representatives on the issue and was not pressed by councillors on exactly how many people had signed up or as to the reasons why takeup is so low.
This detail only came to light after The Anglo-Celt pressed the company for further detail on the level of takeup. To quote the CEO of e net, Conal Henry, at the meeting he said he was disappointed that Kingscourt was least successful in terms of MAN take-up. Least successful? But he failed to point out that there were no takers in Kingscourt despite the service being available since 2006. Furthermore, he wasn't pressed on the issue by any of our elected representatives.
To be fair to e net, it was only awarded the contract to operate the MANs and was not involved in the installation of the networks.
Furthermore to be told that the government built these fibre optic rings around towns without making provisions for connecting them to existing fibre optic infrastructure in the country, it's the stuff of a Scrap Saturday sketch. It is akin to building a ring road around the town without making the connections to the existing roads' infrastructure.
As taxpayers are expected to pay more and more for reduced services and those on benefits are being increasingly cut back, it's galling to think that millions were spent on a system that's not being used.
Top quality broadband, such as MANs, is essential if Cavan is to have a chance of attracting foreign direct investment and the expenditure was necessary. But to spend all that money and not ensure that the network was connected to the national infrastructure beggars belief. Why would any business pay €7,500 or more to connect to the MAN if they still needed to connect to a wireless (or other such) system to get out of town on the internet highway?
Granted that technical problem has now been resolved in Kingscourt (three months ago) but the service has been available there since 2006. If companies couldn't afford to connect to it in the boom years, what hope is there now?
It's a scandal and taxpayers and ratepayers deserve better.
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