Current committee stepping down on June 9th 2007

It was a sad day. IOFFL has done more to highlight Broadband and expose the slugs under rocks than any other organisation in Ireland.

And yes there are slugs, but there are also gems, people who worked in the most unexpected companies and Government departments offering help advice and most of all confirmation that we were making a difference. That important people were paying attention, getting annoyed at us overturning their spin and highlighting deficiencies.

It did feel at times like you were banging your head against a brick wall but yet when you saw a nugget of information IOFFL had ferreted out being used by the media to great effect in a debate on broadband it was very satisfying.:)

It was an incredible learning experience and in particular learning just how much power and influence the media and journalists wield in Ireland. At the same time it could be a soul destroying grind, watching the same old tripe being regurgitated in print, passed off by lazy journalists as gospel truth with no fact checking of any kind.

I also learned how much dicipline it requires to do live interviews and deal with the nerves and fumbles that occur during an interview. I have a lot more respect for politicians and others who do this day in and day out. It is not easy and takes a high level of mental agility and intelligence. Next time you see someone fumble, stutter, loose track of their argument and generally come off as an idiot, thats an ordinary Joe Soap. The polished and prefessional ones are very very good. David McRedmond, IOFFL's arch nemesis, was one such and although he was the enemy, was a consumate professional. He made it look easy.

Lessons learnt are as follows.

Regulators in Ireland are baaad, mm okay?

Not deliberately bad, not populated by roaming hoards of trolls but by the very nature of them and the environment they operate in, Irish regulators are the ultimate “Designed by a committee” solutions. Tied by regulation, shafted from above by politicians, below by consumers and sideways by vested interests they have and will be ineffectual in their current guise.

Stick to facts ma’am

Spin and anti-spin is the cut and thrust of any debate these days and IOFFL were incredibly successful by sticking to the facts, backing up their facts with statistics, reports and third party publications. By countering spin with easy to digest nuggets of information, researched data and concise summaries of EU and other reports we were able to consistently give a straight answer to a straight question.

Oireachtas committees mean well.

When I heard that an Oireachtas committee was issuing a report that slammed broadband in Ireland and was offering clear easy steps to the solution that were echoed in earlier reports from other Government reports I though “Here we go, we’ve cracked it”. Not a hope. In theory everyone in Government should pay attention to such a report, in reality the few people who could actually implement the report didn’t.

Be careful what you wish for.

In a few cases when lamenting about a particular Minister or the implementation of a brilliant idea, IOFFL’s wishes were granted. We got a new Minister and we got an idea using the Group Water Schemes as a template for broadband implemented. Sadly in the first instance it was out of the frying pan into the fire and in second the resulting mishmash of ideas, concepts and implementation resulted in a half cocked plan that was unwieldy, difficult to implement and staggeringly hard to get access to.




It’s been fun in general and I am more than willing to help anyone who wishes to continue the work of IOFFL or other lobby groups relating to this area.

Thank you to the members, who kept us going, contributed to the debate and gave us the moral support. In particular I’d like to thank Damien, his hard work beggar’s belief. :eek:

I’ll still be around on boards so feel free to make contact or PM me if needs be.

Regards

John