I propose to take Questions Nos. 1025 and 1026 together.
The Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) aims to ensure high speed broadband access (minimum 30 megabits per second) to all premises in Ireland, regardless of location. The NBP has been a catalyst in encouraging investment by the telecoms sector. Today, 7 out of 10 of the 2.3 million premises in Ireland have access to high speed broadband. By 2020, 9 out of 10 premises will have access to a high speed broadband connection. This is being achieved via a combination of commercial investment and a State led intervention.
In April 2017, I signed a Commitment Agreement with eir in relation to its plans to provide high speed broadband to 300,000 premises in rural areas on a commercial basis. Information on eir's planned rural deployment is available at
http://fibrerollout.ie. A copy of the Commitment Agreement is available on my Department’s website www.dccae.gov.ie .
Officials from my Department meet with eir on a monthly basis to review the company’s performance on the on-going rollout by a number of sub-milestones. One of these sub-milestones is the number of premises for which detailed and high level design has been completed.
The latest detailed figures available to officials from my Department show eir’s designs up to the end of April 2018. Under the Commitment Agreement eir committed to completing detailed and high level design for 271,000 and 295,000 premises respectively by this time. According to figures provided to my Department the company has, as of the end of April, completed detailed and high level design for 239,000 and 272,000 premises respectively. These issues have arisen as a result of the scale and complexity of this project. Officials from my Department will continue to intensively engage with eir on a monthly basis in relation to all project milestones.
Data for Q1 2018 recently verified by my Department indicates that the company has passed some 145,000 premises nationwide as part of its ongoing deployment. These premises have been passed predominantly with Fibre to the Home, with some eVDSL technology also utilised. All of these 145,000 premises are part of the original 300,000 eir agreed to pass under the Commitment Agreement.
eir has signalled that there has been some knock-on effects to the delivery of the 2018 milestone targets due to the severe weather impacts of both storms Ophelia and Emma. I have met with the senior management in eir and expressed to them the importance of implementing measures to catch up with milestone targets as a priority.
