Call to provide digital hubs for smaller towns and villages

Establishing digital hubs in smaller towns and villages could help rejuvenate and generate business for local commercial premises.

The idea was put forward during Monday's Lifford-Stranorlar Municipal District meeting in Lifford.

Cllr Gary Doherty said he had motions passed about establishing digital hubs in villages throughout their municipal district as he believed there was a huge potential for the expansion.

"It was there even before the onset of Covid and particularly since with the numbers of people now working from home. I think we need to open up the idea of digital hubs. It has been proven that shared spaces have been shown to be attractive to people who want to avoid the commute to work but who also want some structured feel of going into an office and separating home life from work life."

He said establishing such hubs would also help rejuvenate villages in their MD and increase footfall in town and village centres during the day time.

"People would use local shops to buy things like coffee and snacks and generate income for businesses. There is certainly a number of buildings in this MD that could be prime locations if we were to be proactive  and approach them with a view to establishing hubs."

Cllr Doherty also asked how the Donegal Hubs Forum worked and how could the councillors work with them within the council's Remote Working Strategy to expand what they already had in their MD

Director of economic development, emergency services and information systems, Garry Martin said he agreed with Cllr Doherty that digital hubs have proven themselves in a post-Covid world and are hugely useful in the areas they were in.

"I am aware that the Department of Rural and Community Development, the sponsoring department that has initiated a lot of these co-working and rural-working locations are doing a review at present of the digital hub and remote working model - not that they don't think that it's a good idea but because they recognise each one of them probably needs a bespoke business model to make them work effectively and efficiently

"Those that are part of a larger community centre like the broadband connection points tend to be able to operate quite well, they are part of a bigger ecosystem, there are existing income lines coming in and they can cover their ongoing costs reasonably well.

"I think the challenge that is probably going to exist and I suspect that this is why the department is considering it, is in these stand-alone ones where you have a stand bespoke building with intermittent usage.

"The question is how do you develop the business model that's going to cover the cost of actually running those; what's that going to look like going forward; what is the critical mass of activity that is going to make them effective, is there a need for some form of support for them, should it be local or national government or part of a national scheme? 

"All of those conversations are ongoing at the moment with a view clearly to make them as effective as they possibly can in as many areas as possible."

He added they were looking forward to the outcome of all of it.