Rural businesses face constant uphill battles daily

A conference in Castlepollard heard how patchy broadband is among the difficulties facing rural businesses. But the revelation came as no surprise to a firm based close to Castlepollard, and selling internationally."Broadband is a huge issue for us," Jason Coyle, of the Finea firm "Mr. Crumb", told the Westmeath Examiner this week."It is a constant uphill battle everyday as we basically do all our business electronically," he said.At the Castlepollard seminar, organised by the Moate-based Irish Rural Link (IRL), a national network campaigning for sustainable rural communities, poor broadband availability, red tape and regulation, the planning system, and difficultiles accessing finance were listed as major headaches facing rural businesses today.That rural businesses need to come together in local networks to harness their knowledge and provide a strong voice to influence local and national policy was the conclusion of the event, held at the Hotel Castlepollard.Broadband remains a major nightmare for rural businesses, Jason Coyle confirmed to the Westmeathe Examiner, adding that "Mr. Crumb" cannot access full broadband because there is none available in Finea.As a result, the firm relies on satellite broadband, which is less than ideal as the connection can be slow or cut out completely in the middle of a transaction."It majorly affects our competitiveness as for instance, some customers demand that we have full broadband before they deal with us, so it puts us at a disadvantage straight away," he explained."We have had instances in the past where our connection has cut and one of our staff has had to drive to Mullingar to access the internet. This means more than two hours downtime."For the past seven years Eircom have been telling us that they will upgrading the broadband in Finea, and they've been telling us that every six months for the past seven years."It is extremely time consuming and extremely frustrating," he admits.Other issues facing Jason include the lack of trained personnel in the food industry in Ireland:"I mostly have to recruit in the UK for technical roles because there is a lack of skills specific to the food industry. There are all of these people out of jobs, and of course I would like to recruit locally, but it is down to Government mismanagement once again," he says.More broader issues facing rural businesses according to Jason are water and sewerage issues, and the tightening of credit from the banks."I know of another business trying to expand in this area, which would create another five jobs locally, but it is impossible for them to get planning permission from the Council," he said.According to IRL Policy and Communications Officer Seán O'Leary, the number of businesses coming to discuss their inability to access broadband proves that internet access in rural areas is still patchy despite numerous Government initiatives to tackle the issue."Irish Rural Link's analysis of the National Broadband Scheme (NBS) showed that up to 12,000 premises would not be able to access broadband despite the Scheme. We hope the Government engages with rural communities, businesses and entrepreneurs when designing their recently proposed successor to the NBS in order to avoid the mistakes of the past," he said.Mr. O'Leary concluded that the lack of broadband is constraining the ability of small businesses to compete."Irish Rural Link have been actively campaigning for a high quality rural broadband service which uses a range of technologies to deliver future proofed, equitably priced broadband across the country," he said."Rural business people and the community and voluntary sector must start working together.A bottom up approach where we build a network of local networks is the best way to influence local and national policy and strengthen rural businesses. IRL will do whatever we can to facilitate this process," he said.