The EU says that Irish people are more keen to work from home than other EU citizens but are being stymied by huge gaps in rural broadband availability.
Forty -three per cent of rural Irish residents say that broadband is still a problem in their area, compared to just 26pc across the EU.
Ireland sits close to the top of EU countries who say that “digital infrastructure” still needs to be addressed.
This is in spite of Irish people being the most gung-ho across the continent about working from home, with 33pc telling the Eurobarometer survey that they are “much more likely” to work from home “at least some of the time” when the pandemic ends. This is a higher figure than any other EU country polled in the survey.
The latest Eurobarometer research comes after Ireland’s National Broadband Plan (NBP) has admitted delays in its rollout this year, blaming Covid restrictions.
The Eurobarometer report says that half of Irish people are less likely to want to live in a rural area after the pandemic, compared with just 19pc who say they they might be more likely to want to live there.
Ireland’s €2bn NBP plan, which is to provide high-end fibre broadband availability to 540,000 rural homes and businesses in the next five years, will only see 60,000 premis es ‘passed’ this year, falling short of the 115,000 promised.
Although the delay will not affect the cost of the rollout to the taxpayer, it looks set to leave tens of thousands of households stranded longer than they thought.
While both Eir and Siro are rolling out their own private fibre broadband networks, these are focused mainly in towns that already have some broadband infrastructure.
Alternative rural services, such as rooftop aerial wireless options from companies like Imagine Broadband, have only picked up a small fraction of the footprint that’s due to be covered by the NBP.
Starlink, the high-speed satellite broadband service launched by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, is currently available to pre-order in Ireland with an expected launch in the a utumn, although it costs €100 per month plus a €500 up-front payment for a satellite dish.