At our meeting of Dublin City Council this Monday I am calling on the City Manager to approach Google with a view to trialling its new state of the art broadband in Dublin City. Google is launching a new project entitled ‘Google Fiber for Communities’ and is looking for interested parties to make themselves known.

We talk a lot about the knowledge economy and the smart economy and about how we need to invest in both to lay the foundations for the country’s recovery. But nothing is happening on the ground. We aren’t seeing any investment at all in critical infrastructure. If the government isn’t going to help us then we should help ourselves. We should go out and look for people to invest in us.

Google has launched a new initiative to test ultra-high speed broadband and I’m calling on the City Manager to approach Google directly with a request that Dublin City be considered as a possible location for such a trial. We need to be proactive. Dublin is going to drive our country’s recovery and we need state of the art communications in place if we are to do that. To make Dublin a better and more attractive place to live and do business.

Granted Google’s project is currently aimed at communities in America, but Dublin is the ideal overseas location for a possible expansion of the project given that Google’s European, Middle Eastern and African HQ is located here. It may not be a runner, but imagine if it was – imagine then the potential gains for the City. And if you don’t ask, you don’t get. At the very least we should make our interest known and start a dialogue with Google.