I got a bit side tracked there for the last couple of weeks. While I had known (theoretically) that moving was time consuming and hard work, it didn’t really sink in until we physically started moving. However, we are in and up and running. Still a few bits a pieces to complete, the house painters of this world are flat out, definitely one sector of the economy not currently in the doldrums.

Now that I am safely ensconced with a variety of broadband suppliers to choose from and an almost guaranteed 24/7/365 electricity supply to rely on, I have to have a bit of a rant about services in rural Ireland. Before I begin I know that Ireland has a very dispersed population which has generated its own service problems, but then this was the type of development that was allowed to occur.  In the 11 years we were in Lisdoonan – approx. 4 miles outside Carrickmacross we had seen all the service faux pas that a small company could ever wish not to see.  We were regularly disconnected by the ESB in a plan to upgrade their networks, most of the outages we were notified off, some were not, when we complained to the ESB Ombudsman about those not notified off we were brushed off with a letter which said nothing other than the ESB were right. When our telephone lines were knocked out by the phantom digger that traverses the country knocking out phone lines, the repair time quoted and implemented by Eircom increased from 4 hours in the early 2000s to 2 days in 2009.

I have to take a deep deep breath and start a new paragraph before I mention broadband. We tried everything, I now wonder why, but we liked Lisdoonan and it seemed worth while fighting to have a decent broadband service. We were only 2 miles from the N2, 4 miles from Carrickmacross, 50 miles from Dublin. I tempted to say that it wasn’t exactly the Aran Islands but then they probably (and rightly so) had a decent connection! We thought that it would be possible to get a decent connection, our ambitions didn’t stretch to NGN, a straight forward reliable 2/3MB connection would have made our lives easier. Alas it wasn’t to be. I’ll not knock you unconscious with the various people we met, lobbied, time spent or schemes we encouraged. Suffice it to say we pretty much contacted and met everyone we should have.

The Rural Broadband Scheme looked like a runner, the schools broadband scheme had potential, the ESB Network and the RTE broadband capacity all ran through rural areas. The ESB fibre crossed our land at home, 2 miles up the road, .5 of a mile from the N2 and they still can’t get broadband. Fortunately, mam is happy to make do with texting and is regularly seen walking around the house waving her mobile in the air, casting a spell to send a text message. I visited every high point in a 3 mile radius, Monaghan is definitely undersold the views are fabulous, however the scratches and thorns were not so endearing. Before you ask satellite wasn’t a runner, when it originally became available cost were prohibitive and then most of our work involved uploading where latency issues kicked in. We looked at a microwave link and that was when we conceeded  defeat. We couldn’t justify staying in Lisdoonan, it may have been a lovely location and setting but the provision of continuous, dependable, adequate rural services to ensure the survival of an internet related company just didn’t happened in 11 years.

On a positive note we had the best postman in An Post, if ever there is an award out there for post man of the year then Brian Flanagan would have to get it. He epitomised all that is good and right in having a rural postal service to the door.

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