Kildare schools to receive business class broadband service – Lawlor

Tuesday, March 5th 2013

Fine Gael TD for Kildare North, Anthony Lawlor, has today (Tuesday) welcomed the announcement by the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Pat Rabbitte TD, and the Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn TD, that 216 schools are to receive 100Mbps (business class) broadband service which will be up and running this year.

“This is great news for students in Kildare who will hugely benefit from this investment in their education. In rolling out high speed broadband, pupils and children will benefit from state-of-the-art educations tools.

“Where schools don’t teach certain subjects, for instance, there may be an opportunity to connect with schools that do teach the subject via skype or other such applications so that students are given every opportunity to receive a first class education which will stand to them as they forward in their working life.

“As technology evolves, so too must the methods by which we teach our children. They are the future of this country and we must evolve and adapt our teaching methods to meet the new innovations in the technology. I have been working for some time now with Mairead McGuinness MEP in Europe to raise the European-wide issue of VAT on ebooks for education. I believe that VAT should be abolished on ebooks bought as an educational tool to make it more affordable for schools and students to purchase these valuable tools for their studies.

“I would like to thank Ministers Rabbitte and Quinn for their hard work in bringing this project to fruition.”

ENDS