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TODAY A GOVERNMENT put forward its recommendations for how issues around access to broadband and mobile phones will be solved.
Communications Minister Denis Naughten and Arts Minister Heather Humphreys brought a report compiled by a broadband taskforce before Cabinet for consideration.
The report contains 40 actions aimed at accelerating the delivery of telecoms infrastructure, ahead of the rollout of the National Broadband Plan which will bring high speed broadband to all premises throughout the country.
Here are the key actions included in the report:
Some more technical aspects which will improve broadband services include:
An annual forum convened to discuss wider issues impacting the rollout of telecoms infrastructure across Ireland, and a group will monitor the implementation of the report.
Delays
Ireland has frequently scored poorly in comparison to other EU countries when it comes to the percentage of households that have access to broadband.
The National Broadband Plan was first announced in 2012 with very little progress made until last year, when then-minister for communications Alex White said he expected to sign contracts with the winning bidder or bidders by mid-2016.
However, the procurement process is still ongoing and a winning bidder has yet to be appointed.
Minister Denis Naughten said that he’s ”critically aware of the frustrations being felt across Ireland in terms of poor connectivity” and that the Broadband Plan would be delivered in “the shortest time possible”.
Already, mobile operators are completing upgrades of their 3G and 4G networks; there was an €8 million allocation in Budget 2017 for the 700MHz spectrum band; telecoms operators are continuing to invest in the rollout of high speed broadband across Ireland.
Fianna Fáil Communications spokesperson Timmy Dooley criticised the timeframe for the implementation of the report, saying “there is no need to undergo another mapping exercise to see where there are mobile broadband blackspots. The mobile phone operators know exactly where coverage is poor”.
What people in many communities will be asking when they read this report is: when will my house get access to decent, high speed broadband and mobile coverage?
Unfortunately, the answer is the same as it was before this report was published: 2023 at the earliest for fixed high speed broadband in the home.
According to the Department of Communications, 1.4 million households currently have access to high speed broadband.
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He says we’re on track, but we’re behind. Which is it?
@Sean Walsh: where does he say we are behind? Just trying to be popular with another dig. Sad
@Sean Walsh: the backtrack, the EU is on the middle track and UK is on the front track
@Sean Walsh: Given the supply issues we are on track. We are performing very well compared to othet European countries
@Gerard Heery: the same UK that is going against expert advise on the vaccine.
@Sean Walsh: it’s just start, never happened before, expecting unexpected, plan always delay because some issues when starts, sometime it’s just out of gov hands
Hang on there m8 you are not the only one
@John Buckley: nope, 5ft paragraph would tell you that!
@Sean Walsh: nope, he has no control over supply. He has control over rollout and that is on track, as he says. How can we be behind when the supply is not there?
@Sean Walsh: we are behind the track
@Ally Mc Culladgh: Europe, again is not a standard to hold ourselves to. Europe has been an absolute disaster through this whole thing
@aaron: they are our closet neighbours and the EU is the one buying the vaccines for us all. Who should we be comparing ourselves to?
@Ally Mc Culladgh: Pick some far away island nation that nobody travels to or from, and compare us to them.
Seems the way for the willfully ignorant to do it.
@Sean Walsh: why wouldn’t we be behind when Pfizer slowed supply and AstraZeneca failed to uphold their contract with the EU. Do you expect the Irish government to wave a magic wand and pull vaccines out of a hat?
@John Buckley: you’ve answered your own question.
@Teresa O’Halloran: drummers ar5e preferably
@Sean Walsh: We were also All In This Together, until we weren’t. Hard to propaganda when the truth slips out.
@Teresa O’Halloran: Whatever happened to the vaccine we were trying to develop? Someone received grants to do just that. Where are they now?
@Sean Walsh: were behind on the track
@Sean Walsh: We’re on track to hope to get 1.1 million by the end of March, maybe.
I do believe Ireland is doing a good job of the roll out. Ourworlddata shows we are one the best per 100 in Europe for vaccinating. We are doing it by the book and following the guidelines. This vaccine is the game changer the one that can be stored in normal refrigerators. I would hope that vaccination rates will ramp up and I hope that we can move on from this terrible past year. The government need to tread carefully here. If we as a nation are vaccinated and there is still hefty restrictions it could be anarchy
@Ally Mc Culladgh: UK has 600k vaccines done a day how many have ireland got in a month? 200k yea if you call that a good job it just shows how gullible you are
@Derek Doogan: you can’t vaccinate with thin air. We are on track with the supply we have. Pretty simple to understand really
@Derek Doogan: The UK are doing 600k per day because they have ignored the manufacturer’s advice and are leaving 12 weeks between 1st and 2nd dose which may compromise immunity levels. We’re doing ours by the book which means it will be slower but we are achieving upwards of 90% immunity per jab.
@Derek Doogan: Derek, you don’t listen to the countless posts about the UK, they are going against Pfizer’a own recommendations on dosing and the timing inteverals, against pfizer’s own recommendations. They are not a standard we should be comparing to.
@Derek Doogan: I’m embarrassed for you
@Derek Doogan: the UK are taking a gamble, they could be in terrible trouble when they try open back up and there population doesn’t have immunity, I would refuse to take the astra vaccine with a 12 week gap!
@Adam: exactly.
@Derek Doogan: You do know they are 13 times bigger than us, and don’t have a supply issue. If you want to compare like with like you are going to have to compare us to other EU countries, and by that measure we are doing well. We all want the vaccination process to speed up, but lets stick to facts.
@Derek Doogan: 2 points, 1 the population difference is huge and as is the mortality rate. Think Ireland has the same sway internationally as the UK, dream on.
@Aileen Lawlor: sure your family got what the UK are saying what they are not doing.
@Aileen Lawlor: lucky them. It up to 12 weeks for some.
@kMc: it’s 12 weeks for most. Less than 1% of their population has had both doses. The north had a head start on ya but we have more with both doses
I think Stephen Donnelly is doing a fairly good job in connection with the distribution of the vaccine in the Rep.of Ireland..We must remember that as a small country we are in the line with the likes of Germany. France and Italy so let’s get behind the minster on this this issue because he is doing his best for us.
@Marty Mc.: I didn’t realise Donnelly was actually out there distributing it. Well done Stephen, I thought your job was to just talk sh*te and in riddles
@Marty Mc.: A brief like health requires a tenacious and capable minister, neither of which qualify Donnelly. He’s a spoofer. Made the right sounds in opposition but having taken the job, has shown he is unable to tame that tiger. I was no fan of Harris but he is no better.
@Marty Mc.:
OK Mrs Donnelly , little Stephen is doing a fine job bless him.
@Adrian O’Donnell: Donnelly is possibly the worst health Minister ever..and that saying something..each interview is cringe.
@John McCann: now whose talking s****
@John McCann: He always gives the vibe that he’s a project manager that hasn’t a clue what’s going on.
@Marty Mc.:
Well done to the HSE and the government so far, hopefully the good rollout continues.
Still long way to go, but looks like right on the track
For those who are interested in statistics and data sets
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
Date we started etc we are doing very well in comparison.
@Ally Mc Culladgh: thank you!
When you compare the roll out to other EU countries, yes , we are doing well. But when you compare the speed of the roll out in the 4 ‘European’ union countries that make up the UK , we are sadly miles behind. We in the EU have set a low bar for ourselves and publishing data of EU vaccinations alone doesn’t fool anyone. We are bound by EU procurement , but we don’t have to be happy about it.
@Gary O’Grady: is that the same country that is risking lives going against vaccine guild lines, thank god we live in Ireland.
@Gary O’Grady: we have fully vaccinated, the 2 doses required, a larger precentage of our population than the UK according to the most recent reports. We were 1% while they were 0.7%. Us doing it right is better than the UK’s half measure approach. Especially as the vaccines lose some of their effectiveness with only a single dose, and lose some of their effectiveness when dealing with new variants. So that’s the UK’s single shot recipients having the protection offered reduced twice, will it still be enough? Only time will tell I suppose, but I’d rather our approach at the minute.
@Gary O’Grady: every EU country could have issued an Emergency Use Authorisation like the UK did, but Ireland decided not to do so. Like the October lockdown, Christmas surge, why didn’t we close the borders in March… hindsight is 20/20. It was obvious from September that vaccines were on the way. That was the time to develop rollout plans, that was the time to design and start building a vaccine database and appointment system, whether vaccines were to arrive in December, January or June it was irrelevant. Instead, the HSE/NPHET started this process when the first vaccines arrived. Getting 40,000 first shots into the arms of health workers and healthcare patients is the easy bit, issuing second doses in parallel to first and accelerating to 100, 000 shots a week is the real test.
@NotMyIreland: the UK action is a response to the situation they found themselves in after Christmas, obviously it isn’t ideal but was an emergency reaction. Having claimed the most vulnerable have received the first dose, the next two weeks will tell whether it is effective in the short term or not and people should wait and see. At least they were in a position to make such a call. EU hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory over the last 2 weeks as an entity and with signs of creeping vaccine nationalism we would do well to have a plan B. I say this as an ardent EU supporter.
@Derdaly: The UK were in that position because they approved the AstraZeneca vaccine on data that wasn’t acceptable to either the EMA or the FDA. Yeah the EMA are very careful and have high standards, but if the FDA wouldn’t approve it on the data the UK used, well it shows the UK were willing to risk people’s health for headlines. I’d prefer the EMA or FDA uphold their safety standards even if it meant waiting longer for approval.
@NotMyIreland: you don’t know what data the UK had or hadn’t. I would guess that the submissions for both UK and EU authorities were similar and both were revising on an ongoing basis for expediency. It seems likely now that the delay in submitting for formal EU approval by AZ was more to do with availability of supply rather than correct documentation.
During Ebola the WHO advised to not let the perfect get in the way of the effective. In others words, being 70 or 80 per cent right today may be better than 100% next month. I’ll wait to judge the UKs actions until the results are obvious.
@Derdaly: I dont know what data was provided to both, but I do know they were different. The UK had approved the AstraZeneca vaccine before the last two sets of data were provided to the EU and FDA. They both requested more data from a further trial, of 13000 if my memory serves me, which was only just started when the application was made to the UK. The final data dump to the EMA was in early January. The applications were not based on the same data, AstraZeneca have said as much. The UK accepted the original trial data which AstraZeneca admitted at the time was flawed. The EMA and FDA said it wasn’t acceptable and requested the extra trial. This was all reported at the time.
@NotMyIreland: not true, the UK body that approved it is staffed by the same people who used to run the EMA when it was based in the Uk and didn’t move to the Netherlands. The reason they were quicker is down to the fact that 27 countries had to say their piece. Also the one dose with 12 12 weeks apart has been approved by the suppliers it is just they hadn’t tested it with that timescale. Would I take one dose now and another one in 12 weeks.. yes if the alternative was wait months for any vaccine.
@Hugh Fogerty: Not true Hugh, do your research on the extra trial required by the EMA and FDA.
@NotMyIreland: That’s interesting. We are using now I believe 3 types of the Vaccine in this country. I may be wrong. But you must give the same 2nd dose as the first correct. The best way is by the 3rd week for the 2nd jab do we have those sames vaccines in stock to complete the vaccination in time.
@NotMyIreland: the UK approval is based on an EUA and on accepting the data provided to that time, data that was also with the EU at the time. I’m sure the same data provided to the EU in mid January has also been submitted to the UK. My understanding is that the US is working off a separate US based trial as they weren’t happy with the AZ hap hazzard dose and age profile in the original. Hence the delay.
I’m not saying either is right or wrong, I’m saying judge the UK when the effect is known. Most people expressing a negative view is based on an unconscious desire for them to be wrong and us to be right, I’m sure they’re not all immunologists ;-). It’s the same emotion that causes belief that everything NPHET says to be fact because the alternative is too hard to contemplate.
@Derdaly: Oh yeah they definitely would have gotten it too. My point was they were willing to approve before they recieved it, when two other governing bodies weren’t. Also to note the UK in its approval rejected the single dose AstraZeneca application, and then went down that route, or pushed the second dose out to 12 weeks which the data for was from a fairly small subset of the UK and Brazilian trials. I agree and did say in my original post that only time will tell.
In 1947 a case of smallpox was found in New York. Although a lot of the city was inoculated already the administration took no risks. The health commissioner started an inoculation program. In a month they vaccinated 6 million people.
This is the kind of urgency needed now. It’s clearly possible. If it’s going to take 9 months to inoculate the population to herd immunity then any new variant of the virus will lead to another 9 months or more of lockdown. That could happen every year. At the end no tourist related job or service related job or airline will survive. The EU can hardly survive with each country closing its borders. So we need new vaccines at the start of the year for any mutations. Then mass inoculations from august to October. Every year.
@Eugene Norman: it’s possible if you have that amount of the vaccine which we don’t
@Eugene Norman: do you have 6 million vaccines out the back by any chance, asking for a country.
@Sam Harms: the New York guy had 0 vaccines to start with. Both the EU and the Irish government need to get moving. That excuse will wash for a month or so. From this year on we need the vaccines ready to go for any mutations from august. Closing economies for months every mutation isn’t going to sit well.
@daniel roche: that’s not my job Daniel. Maybe you are confusing me with the government. I’m not just implicating the Irish government here but also the EU.
And ok, maybe it is harder on the first run, so let’s say 3-4 months and not 6 weeks.
Because 9-12 months inoculation periods per mutation, which could happen every year, with lockdowns and travel restrictions will mean no end to this. It’s time for governments to get to work and not put the onus on the general population.
@Eugene Norman: no I’m confusing you with a normal person, my bad.
@daniel roche: Are you special Daniel?
@daniel roche: reported as an ad hominem.
@Eugene Norman: New York held stock of 650,000 smallpox vaccines at the time that announcement was made.
@NotMyIreland: And gathered vaccine reserves from other states as well as getting the 7 pharmaceutical companies making them to ramp up production. The vaccines had been in production for 50+ years at that stage too. So absolutely no comparison to the situation in the world today.
@Eugene Norman: there is a factory 120 miles from Dublin making the AZ vaccine, but it’s not in the eu, and we have decided what’s more important
Too many positive and sensible comments on this thread.
Where are all the head-the-balls?
@Páid Ó Donnchú: probably still figuring out how to connect George Soros and the one world government to the vaccine supply issues. They’ll be along as soon as they’ve cracked it, no doubt
@Páid Ó Donnchú: Just the thread above. It astonishes me how many people are so ill informed about the UK rollout and EU Procurment.
That’s laois sorted
@gavin meade: only 25 counties to go so.
For the over 85′s yet Germany is saying they are not giving it to over 65′s????https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/germany-set-to-limit-astrazeneca-vaccine-to-under-65s-1.4470463
@Greig Fairfield: EPA approved it for over 65s
Its been reported that several cases of variant Pino Grigio and Cabernet Sauvignon have been found at Tescos
@paul: code named bin 389
I am surprised that Ireland has not produced a vaccine for Covid. We have lots of pharmaceutical companies here!
@Cooking School: an Irish company is close to developing a tablet that can stop the spread of Covid
Bring back the thumbs down button
@sandra clifford: bring back cherry coke
@J: No, Pepsi Clear.
Sweden and Poland both saying they won’t be giving Astra Zeneca jabs to over 65s due to lack of evidence it protects them.
Looking like another fine mess EU got us into
Any news on getting Russian Vaccine
He’s like an original cast member of the coneheads. God but even the mere sight of him annoys me.
Mr Donnelly there is about 55.000 thousand people in ireland living at home cannot see many of them making their way to gp clinics hanging around think again
And there’s the UK with over 9 million vaccinated. Ireland slow AF!
@Tracie Kelly: you can’t vaccinate with thin air. We’re on top of the table in Europe at present re vaccinations per 100 head. Whether that will last is a different question.
@Tracie Kelly: That figure is for the first of two jabs. Their completed double doses are not as impressive. They got the entire media (including the Guardian) on side though so thats something.
Big thumbs up from me.
How can the plonkers f( )ck it up,
@Liam O Connor: I suppose you can do a better job hey?
@Liam O Connor: simplistic response to a simplistic comment in fairness Liam.
Thankless job.
From the beginning generally the best recommendation was to proceed with caution.
So Europe did.
Now we are high up in the vaccine roll out programme and its not good enough.
Not a lot really
Inject us with the poison don’t question it just do
What week?
Or September
That will be a further 11% of the population fully vaccinated in March.
Hopefully pace will substantially improve in quarter two.
have your say