Milltown remote working hub can’t log on to govt scheme
Milltown Community Centre was one of a number of hubs selected for the government’s roll-out of Broadband Connection Points (BCPs) in rural towns and villages in 2020.
BCPs are publicly accessible sites in areas that do not have adequate broadband services, and they were part of a five-year government strategy. To date, €2.1 million has been invested by the Department of Rural and Community Development on BCP infrastructure.
A spokesperson for the community centre in Milltown says that for the last 12 months or more, the broadband connection rarely worked, and the club have now had to pay for the installation of fibre optic cable through another supplier, in order to be able to promote their centre as a remote working hub.
“A number of centres got them locally, including Milltown. It initially worked, for about six months, but after that the connection wasn’t reliable,” said Paul Heduan, an officer at the club.
“This thing was rolled out with great fanfare by government, who are all about decarbonisation and leaving the car at home, working from home or remote working – but it just didn’t work.”
Paul, an environmental compliance officer, added: “We’re trying to promote Milltown as local community hub – we have a gym, an all weather pitch and walking track, a conference room for community meetings, a canteen and ample car parking. This was meant to be another option for people.”
Paul says he has been in contact with the authorities, including the Department of Rural and Community Development, Westmeath County Council and Vodafone, who are responsible for the scheme, but claims the response was “very poor”.
“There have been emails back and forth for the last 12 months but nothing has been done. How it’s meant to work is, you sign up online from your phone to use the centre.
“The government have this platform for remote workspace called Connected Community.ie, it’s like Airbnb. You look on the map of Ireland, like Google Maps, and it shows the remote working hubs available, and you select which zone you would like to work in.
“You’re then supposed to get a unique four-digit code that allows you to connect to the broadband in Milltown Community Centre, but what began happening was the code wouldn’t arrive for about five hours or so. So if you were a business person, and you had an important meeting at 9am, you couldn’t get into the wifi because the code wouldn’t arrive for hours.
“With the BCP connection, we were trying to promote Milltown as e-working or remote working centre. We even had training days in Dublin on how to promote it as a remote working hub. But how could we promote it when the wifi connection was, essentially, crap? Our number of active users is zero because of it.
“We’re a volunteer community club and we’re trying to do lots of things to keep the community alive. So what we’ve had to do as a club is go out and get Eir to install a fibre broadband cable to the club and we’ve signed a monthly contract.
“But it’s just atrocious that taxpayer money has paid for these BCPs, the government roll out these schemes with great fanfare, but then it doesn’t actually work.”
OFFICIAL response
In response to a query from the Westmeath Examiner, the Department of Rural and Community Development (DRCD) stated: “DRCD was recently made aware of the issues and haves been in contact with the Milltown committee in this regard. DRCD is not aware of any issues with other BCPs in Westmeath. As with any project of this size and complexity, there have been isolated issues arising at various sites, but those have been addressed as they arose and the learnings applied to ensure they do not arise elsewhere. The feedback that DRCD has received from communities with a BCP has been extremely positive. Working with BCP stakeholders, DRCD is currently drafting a development strategy for the network to ensure their continued success and sustainability.”