Limited broadband: ‘We’re beyond the pale, we’re out of Dublin, we feel forgotten about’

Kevin O’Keeffe runs a medium-sized machinery business, Kearney Brothers Agri Ltd, with his business partner Eoin Kearney in Acres, near Fermoy in Cork.

The company of seven employees conducts much of its business online, particularly customer accounts, Revenue returns, and domestic and international orders. However, O’Keeffe says his broadband speed is so slow that “it can take five minutes to connect to online banking alone”.

“It can turn a standard eight-hour working day into a 12-hour day easily,” he says. “In the morning before 8am you’re looking at a download speed of 1.63 [megabits per second]. After 10am, it’s under one.”

High-speed broadband is defined as a connection with minimum speeds of 30Mbps download and 6Mbps upload, according to the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications.

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“Revenue returns are taking hours. Computers crash — our IT guys can’t even do any repairs remotely — so it costs us to bring them on-site,” says O’Keeffe. “We’ve chopped and we’ve changed internet provider, and there’s no difference.

“I don’t live very far away from the garage and I’m up on 50Mbps with Imagine, but unfortunately we can’t get Imagine in the area where our business is.”

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He adds: “The biggest cost has been personal time. Both myself and my business partner have small families, and do you want to be there at night when you want to be at home playing with the children?”

A spokesman for the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications said 23 per cent of premises in Ireland cannot avail of high-speed broadband from commercial operators, and these premises will have high-speed broadband made available to them through the National Broadband Plan.

He said National Broadband Ireland will deploy high-speed broadband of at least 500Mbps to people living and working in the “intervention area” by the end of 2026.

O’Keeffe remains “sceptical” about predictions for the roll-out.

“I don’t understand why we’re still waiting. Pre-election, there’ll be a bit of interest in it. But any elected official post election, they don’t have any interest in this. If there was interest in this, it would be done.

“We’re beyond the pale, we’re out of Dublin, we feel forgotten about. We’re a rurally located business. We have to be because we’re working on noisy, large machinery.”