{"id":55509,"date":"2025-07-11T00:54:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T00:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/55509\/"},"modified":"2025-07-11T00:54:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T00:54:11","slug":"better-late-than-never-for-achills-broadband-lifeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/55509\/","title":{"rendered":"Better late than never for Achill\u2019s broadband lifeline"},"content":{"rendered":"

A win is a win. They don\u2019t ask you how. You\u2019re only as good as your last \u20ac2.5bn project.<\/p>\n

Sporting metaphors usually help capture the mood of political triumphs, and sure enough, in Keel Community Centre on Achill Island, the hall had the air of a dressing room after an All-Ireland win.<\/p>\n

Announcing the roll-out of fibre broadband across Ireland\u2019s largest island, minister for culture Patrick O\u2019Donovan spoke with the confidence of a manager who\u2019d been doubted more times than the wifi signal in the back bedroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cWE SHOWED THEM\u201d was the tenor of much of his speech.<\/p>\n

By the fifth time he said it, the polite nods of locals had turned to even politer sighs.<\/p>\n

Credit where it\u2019s due: The Government doesn\u2019t get many slam-dunks these days.<\/p>\n

Connecting the people of Achill with the rest of the world was a rare one.<\/p>\n

Smoke \u2019em if you got \u2019em, I guess.<\/p>\n

\"DavidDavid McCourt and TJ Malone of National Broadband Ireland with culture minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan on Keel Beach, Achill Island. \t Picture: Michael McLaughlin<\/p>\n

Here are the stats:<\/p>\n

\u201cMain build works on the island infrastructure are now complete, enabling over 2,500 homes, farms and businesses to access high-speed broadband.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means residents of Ireland\u2019s largest island will have the same access to 2 Gig, reliable broadband as any of the over 380,000 premises that NBI has already passed across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

In plain English, Achill got mail.<\/p>\n

Affordable broadband<\/p>\n

Homes, farms, schools, and businesses now have the option of affordable, high-speed broadband.<\/p>\n

No longer will baristas need to raise a debit card reader skyward to execute a simple payment for a routine skinny flat white.<\/p>\n

Gone are the days of sketchy GAA Go streams.<\/p>\n

I mean, sure, if only there were a Mayo match to watch \u2014 but all jokes aside, broadband means opportunity.<\/p>\n

In an age of remote working, you\u2019re only as good as your download speed.<\/p>\n

It being a launch, there was a launch video.<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019re going to launch a launch video, launch it in Achill. Aerial shots of Keel, Keem, the Famine Village, gorgeous white beaches and roaring blue seas.<\/p>\n

\"CircetCircet managing director (Ireland) Damien Gallagher; National Broadband Ireland stakeholder engagement and PR manager Sandra Dinan; House of Achill founder Anna Sutcliffe; and National Broadband Ireland chief marketing officer Tara Collins. Picture: Michael McLaughlin<\/p>\n

Christ, after three minutes of drone footage of the Wild Atlantic Way, a man would nearly fall to his knees and plead with the people of Achill \u2014 a beautiful outlier of an island \u2014 to run the opposite way from all internet connectivity.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen the best minds of my generation ruined by Twitter scrolling.<\/p>\n

Be brave, Achill. Do without it.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not fair. It\u2019s selective and a bit elitist.<\/p>\n

Island has to be connected<\/p>\n

Listening to Anna Sutcliffe, purveyor of luxury candles through her company House of Achill, you realise that for rural Ireland to survive and thrive, it absolutely has to be connected.<\/p>\n

For young people to have a chance to stay, to move home if they left.<\/p>\n

To begin again, like Anna, if they chose to relocate and try something new.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditionally on the island, we were very dependent on the tourism season,\u201d Anna explains.<\/p>\n

\n Now with fibre, I finally have a fast, reliable connection to support online sales and ensure customer service year-round. I can focus on what I enjoy most about the business \u2014 being creative.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

No arguments here.<\/p>\n

Other small business owners echoed similar relief at the arrival of fibre.<\/p>\n

Lil\u00ed B\u00e1n Caf\u00e9 proprietor John Barrett nails a simple truth: \u201cRunning a business on Achill Island has its challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n Without broadband, the weather often impacted the signal and the reliability of the connection.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

“It\u2019s exciting to see a new wave of business starting on the island, and fibre connectivity has definitely played a big part in this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Central to the Great Connection was adopted Clare man David McCourt, founder and chairman of National Broadband Ireland \u2014 a man with a voice so smooth you could stream Squid Game off it.<\/p>\n

When he addressed the hall, the vibe was less \u201cwe showed them,\u201d more \u201cyou showed yourselves\u201d.<\/p>\n

If I\u2019d closed my eyes, I could\u2019ve sworn I was at a town hall meeting in a Steinbeck novel.<\/p>\n

Remote but close<\/p>\n

Achill, a frontier town in the New West during the gold rush, suddenly connected, with the world their oyster.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing: Achill, though remote, is two hours from Galway. Three hours and change from Dublin, our capital city.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hardly Yellowknife in Canada\u2019s Northwest Territories.<\/p>\n

Standing there in that community centre, I couldn\u2019t help getting swept up in the wave of goodwill and opportunity the Government will justifiably celebrate.<\/p>\n

But as a man who turned turf as a boy just an hour down the road, I couldn\u2019t help thinking of Edwin McGreal writing recently in The Western People: \u201cIn terms of infrastructural development, the Northern Western Region [Connacht plus Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan] is ranked an alarming 218th out of 234 regions across Europe. Our Midlands and Eastern Region scores over three times higher for infrastructural development.<\/p>\n

\n In 2022, the European Commission downgraded us [the Northwest Region] to a \u2018lagging region\u2019 when our GDP fell to 71% of the European average. The focus ought to be diverted here \u2014 and fast.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\n No One Shouted Stop was published by John Healy 57 years ago \u2014 a wolf-whistle lamenting the economic and social decline of rural life in the west of Ireland, and Dublin\u2019s wilful ignorance of it.<\/p>\n

There was no broadband in 1968, and the only fibre in Mayo came from All-Bran.<\/p>\n

That the Government finally delivered on a single promise is good.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s the least they could do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A win is a win. They don\u2019t ask you how. You\u2019re only as good as your last \u20ac2.5bn…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":55510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[40849,40850,40851,332,712,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-55509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-broadband-plan","9":"tag-islands-of-ireland","10":"tag-rural-affairs","11":"tag-consumer-affairs","12":"tag-internet","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114831875553116661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}