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Public Enterprise Minister Mary O'Rourke announced Fianna Fail's pre-election IT and technology policy which included a number of promises, including a pledge to provide free, always-on high-speed broadband connectivity to every large school in the country within three years.
Other Fianna Fail guarantees included a three-year plan to provide broadband infrastructure throughout the state, placing Ireland within the top 10 percent of OECD countries for broadband connectivity.
One ambitious aspect of the scheme announced by O'Rourke would see Ireland become the first country in the EU to have a minimum broadband standard of 5Mb/s for home users and substantially higher for business. "Within five years we will have wired the island," the party claimed.
Other initiatives in the Fianna Fail plan included its promise to deliver all public services that are capable of electronic delivery over the Internet by 2005. The e-government plan, which is essentially the same as government's latest Information Society Plan, will also establish e-government access over the telephone and through a network of one-stop shops.
But Fine Gael, responding to the Minister's announcement, said that O'Rourke's broadband plan would be of little consequence to home users and small business users. Fine Gael public enterprise spokesman, deputy Jim Higgins, said that under Fianna Fail's scheme broadband in Ireland will continue to be charged at prohibitive rates for SMEs and consumers.
"The Minister's broadband announcement will only benefit the large industrial sector," Higgins claimed. In the past Fine Gael has proposed that government should provide a one-off defined differential subsidy to telecom operators who connect their customers to broadband services.
With respect to such notions, O'Rourke said, "Fine Gael's reckless and uncosted plans would undermine the public finances and undermine Ireland's attractiveness as a location for IT companies." The party also had criticisms for some Labour party ideas, saying, "Labour's proposal to raise the ceiling on employers PRSI and raise capital gains tax would cost present and future high tech jobs in Ireland."
Although the Labour party had not yet responded to ElectricNews.Net at the time of going to press, in the past the party has said that it too would like to see broadband rollout expanded across the country. Labour's plan is based primarily on encouraging competition between telecommunications companies and the party claims that its proposed "Department of Infrastructure" could be a key driver in doing this.
Labour has also said that the high cost of Internet usage in Ireland is an issue that need to be examined further.
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