Clarke welcomes £5m rural broadband funding | Latest Newry News, Newry Sport and Newry Business for Newry City

Clarke welcomes £5m rural broadband funding

Alliance Party Councillor Patrick Clarke has warmly welcomed the recent announcement by Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Michelle O’Neill that the next tranche of DARD’s broadband funding will specifically target areas of deprivation in rural areas.

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) is investing £5million in rural broadband, targeting areas that currently cannot connect to fixed wire broadband, and putting in place the infrastructure required to allow third party companies to offer a broadband service to people in rural ‘not spots’.

“The commitment given by the DARD Minister to invest £5million to the delivery of broadband exclusively to target rural areas of high deprivation across Northern Ireland that currently have no fixed wire infrastructure to access broadband will help bring broadband to many rural areas that presently cannot access broadband,” the Alliance Councillor stated.

“I have no doubt that this £5million funding will attract companies supplying broadband to go into into rural areas and use this infrastructure to provide access for rural dwellers and businesses to use broadband.

Clarke added, “The significant investment by DARD will help to stimulate rural businesses and give rural areas access to services via broadband which is already in many towns and cities across Northern Ireland for a number of years.”

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Posted by on May 18 2013. Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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