Timmy Dooley
Question:46. Deputy Timmy Dooley asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the timeline for completion of the tendering process for the national broadband plan. [53418/18]
View answerTuesday, 18 December 2018
Questions (46)
Oral answers (5 contributions)
This is my first time to answer parliamentary questions in my new brief. I look forward to working with Deputies Dooley, Stanley and others from different parties.
The national broadband plan is ambitious. Its objective is to ensure access to a future-proofed, high-speed broadband service, with a minimum download speed of 30 Mbps available to every premises in Ireland. The plan involves a mix of commercial investment and a State-led intervention. It has acted as a catalyst in encouraging a significant level of investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure by commercial operators, with the result that the number of premises with access to a high-speed broadband service has increased from 700,000 in 2012 to 1.7 million today.
The procurement process for the State-led intervention has been framed in such a way as to ensure a once-off intervention in an area that covers 96% of the landmass of Ireland. While the intervention area is predominantly focused on premises in rural areas, it also incudes a significant number of premises in urban areas where commercial operators have no plans to invest. The procurement process to award a contract for the State intervention network is at the final stage. The final assessment of the bid received on 18 September must conclude with regard to whether the solution proposed by the bidder meets the requirements of the plan in terms of the robustness of the technology, value for money, the allocation of risk and appropriate governance mechanisms to ensure this significant intervention by the State will satisfy the Government's policy to ensure high-speed broadband is available to every premises in the country. My priority is to bring the procurement process to a fair and impartial conclusion as quickly as possible. My Department is concluding its assessment of the final tender submission received from the bidder on 18 September. I will bring a recommendation to the Government in the coming weeks.
While it is the Minister’s first opportunity to answer parliamentary questions in his new role, we have had plenty of engagement on this matter in other fora and in the House since his appointment. As he well knows, the national broadband plan has been talked about and promised since 2012. Previous Ministers have failed to give a strict timeline for it reaching certain milestones. The last commitment we received from the Government was when negotiations on the programme for Government were brought to a conclusion. When Independent Members and Fine Gael signed up to it, they spoke about an indicative date for the signing of the contract in June 2017. We know that did not happen. I am anxious that to some extent the Minister set in stone deadlines for the reaching of key milestones. At least then there would be some date on which others could be held to account. I know that previous Ministers were slow to do this because of the potential political fallout, but there has been significant political fallout from the project. It would be helpful to all sides, most particularly the Minister and the Government, if clear timelines and deadlines were set for the reaching of milestones in meeting the project plan. That would ensure all actors in the field would have something to work towards.
I see at what the Deputy is driving. We are at an advanced stage of the evaluation which will be presented to me by all of the expert groups which have been engaged. I do not intend to delay in any unreasonable way in reaching a decision on what should be recommended to the Government. As I said, it will happen in the coming weeks. The real issue of meeting milestones will come after a decision is taken and we are in a position to do so. Any agreement entered into will include milestones and be designed to protect the State in ensuring they are met to a reasonable extent. It would be premature to start specifying milestones when we have not even decided whether the tender is acceptable to the Government.
Is it still the Minister's intention to reach a point where the remaining bidder would at some point be made the preferred bidder, and from there we could proceed towards the signing of a contract between the State and that bidder? Before we even get to the starting point, does the Minister have some indicative timeline? Could we assume that within January a preferred bidder will be appointed, and that at some stage between January and April a contract could be signed? At what point do we think it fair to expect that a contract would be hoped to be agreed with the preferred bidder?
The work is ongoing in designing a contract and I hope there would not be a very unreasonable delay if a decision is taken to move to a contract. In recent times the State has worked through the details of this application and we want to ensure that if the bid is successful, the governance standards will be highly exacting. The reason for the delay since 18 September, if one likes, is that we are ensuring the level of oversight that the Deputy is reasonably expecting to be there. I cannot give timelines until we have a decision and it would be unreasonable for me to do that. I assure the Deputy that the ongoing work is to ensure that insofar as we can, we anticipate and have the sort of oversight that anyone in the House would expect in light of what would be a very significant investment by the State.