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National Broadband Plan

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 15 July 2020

Wednesday, 15 July 2020

Questions (15)

James Lawless

Question:

15. Deputy James Lawless asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if reductions in broadband roll-out time will be evenly distributed nationwide in view of commitments to seek to reduce the roll-out time of the national broadband plan. [16076/20]

View answer

Oral answers (6 contributions)

At the outset I offer my congratulations formally to the new Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan. We laboured together in the vineyard on the communications committee in the previous term so I have full confidence that the Minister is more than au fait with the issue. I look forward to engaging with him on this and on transport matters, which are also close to my heart. I am aware the Minister's new responsibilities will encompass that also. I wish him the best of luck in the term ahead.

My question is on broadband provision and roll-out. I welcome both the commitment in the programme for Government and reports in The Sunday Business Post recently that there is the potential for some accelerated delivery of the national broadband plan. I ask the Minister to elaborate on how that might be achieved and whether it will be uniformly achieved across the country.

I thank Deputy Lawless. I look forward to his next term in the vineyard of policy ideas. He worked very effectively on the digital transformation that we need to achieve so I look forward to continuing to work with him on that.

Rolling out the national broadband plan, NBP, will be central to that. This plan will provide high-speed broadband to the 1.1 million people living and working in the nearly 540,000 premises, including almost 100,000 businesses and farms and 695 schools, where commercial operators currently will not commit to deliver the service.

The State-led intervention will be delivered by National Broadband Ireland, NBI, under a contract signed on 19 November 2019. The NBP network will offer users a high-speed broadband service with a minimum download speed of 150 Mbps from the outset.  By the end of next year, National Broadband Ireland plans to pass about 115,000 premises, with between 70,000 and 100,000 passed each year thereafter until roll-out is completed. All counties will see premises passed in the first two years and more than 90% of premises in the State will have access to high-speed broadband within the next four years.

Design work is complete or ongoing in target townlands across 17 counties and steady progress is being made, with more than 40,000 premises surveyed to date. This survey work is feeding into detailed designs for each deployment area and the laying of fibre should commence shortly with the first fibre to the home connections expected around December of this year.

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of good broadband to ensuring that citizens across Ireland can avail of remote working, education and other essential online facilities. Recognising this, the programme for Government commits to seeking to accelerate the roll-out of the national broadband plan. The programme for Government also recognises that the NBP will be a key enabler to many of the policies envisaged, particularly around increased levels of remote working.

My Department is currently engaging with NBI to explore the feasibility of accelerating aspects of the NBP roll-out and to bring premises which are scheduled for connection in years 6 and 7 of the current plan forward to an earlier date. These discussions are ongoing and a preliminary position will be arrived at by the end of the summer. It is premature at this point to speculate on what premises may benefit from this potential change, other than to say that those premises currently scheduled for the latter end of the roll-out are the focus of the analysis.

I thank the Minister for his answer. The Minister listed several numbers of homes with various target dates. This is welcome but I am particularly interested in the potential for acceleration. I must confess that I was a sceptic in respect of the national broadband plan in the last Dáil but it is in progress, so I wish it Godspeed. We need to roll it out as fast as we possibly can. One of the reasons I was somewhat sceptical is that I believed, and still believe, that there are ways to achieve wider coverage in an accelerated fashion instead of or in parallel with the national broadband plan. One of those approaches, contained in legislation I published during the last Dáil, included a rapid roll-out broadband planning framework. This would allow site-sharing, the reuse of kit and the compilation of an inventory of kit, the standardisation of area plans and planning frameworks, consolidating planning regulations across local authorities and many other things. This legislation included a provision for new planning permission to require ducting to the threshold. From previous committee meetings I know the Minister probably shares my view on this. There are several ways this could be done. I may re-examine that Bill for this new Dáil. These measures can be taken in parallel with and as complements to the national broadband plan.

The Minister mentioned years six and seven. To be local about it, some of my constituents in places like Eadestown and Kilteel in north-east Kildare are 20 km from Dublin city centre. In terms of broadband service provision, however, they are as rural as the west of Ireland or parts of Connemara. They cannot wait until year six or seven for this to happen. There is a large contingent of people who are currently working from home or engaged in high-intensity activity. It is imperative that they receive the service as soon as possible.

I thank the Deputy. This plan was debated extensively throughout the lifetime of the last Dáil. Whatever my concerns around ownership issues and contractual arrangements, and they were real concerns, I was always supportive of the need for a rural broadband system. I am happy to take responsibility for making sure that we deliver it. It is not the only critical infrastructure that we need. Outside the areas covered by the broadband plan, ongoing investment from the likes of Eir, SIRO and other operators will be needed. I absolutely agree with some of the options mentioned by the Deputy, such as improving planning permission requirements so that ducting is included in any new building project, including homes. That absolutely makes sense, as does the sharing of masts or other site systems. This plan does not prevent us from engaging with a range of other initiatives. It does ensure that we leave nobody behind. In light of the increased importance and benefits of broadband, I particularly wish to accelerate delivery to those houses that were previously expected to be provided for in latter years. I hope to deliver to them ahead of schedule.

I thank the Minister. Going back to the heart of the question, I wish to reiterate the proposals which I may discuss with the Minister. They are complementary to the national broadband plan rather than an alternative to it. I am trying to get a greater understanding of the suggestion that there is a potential for accelerated roll-out. Is that driven by technology, geography or commercial factors? That understanding will help us to realise whether this acceleration can be applied uniformly across the country or whether particular clusters will be in the fortunate position of receiving broadband more quickly. I hope the acceleration is technology-driven, and in a procedural sense I hope we can apply it uniformly so that the entire country receives a broadband connection in the same advanced manner.

If I may touch on the Minister's other responsibilities and an area of common interest, this has many benefits across the board. That hardly needs to be restated. I travelled this morning by train from Sallins in north Kildare. The trains are not full, but even with the pandemic and the reduced economic capacity they are beginning to get busy again. We are at the very early stages of reopening. The sooner we can enable people to work at home to avoid those commutes, the faster we can tackle multiple issues pertaining to the environment, quality of life, public transport capacity constraints etc. I really cannot stress the importance of this enough. Perhaps we might examine that legislation or other options. I am very interested in the specifics of the accelerated roll-out that has been flagged in the programme for Government and the recent Business Post reports.

Like so many other projects the national broadband plan has been delayed slightly by the Covid-19 pandemic due to the difficulty of completing certain work but it has not been delayed as much as other projects. A lot of the work of recent months, such as surveying poles to see which ones need to be improved or upgraded, could continue. By the end of this year we expect to be pretty much on target in terms of delivery timelines.

I note another factor that may help accelerate progress. We started this project in a world where it was very hard to get construction workers. There were so many different demands and construction activities taking place. Post Covid-19 it may be a possible to access workers and contractors more quickly than was the case six months ago when the economy was at full tilt.

Moreover, hopefully there is a benefit for everyone in this. Acceleration might be helped by increased confidence that the uptake of these services will be on the higher end of our expectations, because we are seeing the benefits of remote working and the use of high-speed broadband in a way we would not have expected six months ago. I hope that might help us to accelerate the process to the benefit of all concerned.

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