Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 10 November 2020
105. Deputy James Lawless asked the Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications if he will address the broadband deficit in the areas of east County Kildare particularly Eadestown, Rathmore and Kilteel in view of an increasing population density, a high concentration of persons working and studying from home and little progress to date on rolling out fibre infrastructure to the area; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35101/20]
View answerI understand that we covered some of this issue during Topical Issue matters last week. Can the Minister comment again on the predicament of rural east Kildare with regard to broadband provision?
I remember the Topical Issue matter. I hope to get the placenames right in this case, rather than including west Kildare in my east Kildare line-up. My response is similar to the one I gave earlier in response to a Topical Issue matter.
The national broadband plan, NBP, intervention areas are set out as those areas that cannot be met by targeted commercial operators. Premises in the amber area in the map will be provided with high-speed broadband through State-led intervention, the contract for which was signed last November with National Broadband Ireland, NBI. The blue area on the map represents those areas where commercial providers are currently delivering or have plans to deliver a high-speed broadband services. The NBP will offer users a high-speed broadband service with speeds of 500 Mbps from the outset. This service will reach over 90% of all premises in the country. This is expected to be delivered within the next four years.
Details on east Kildare are available through the NBI website, www.nbi.ie, which provides a facility for any premises within the intervention area to register its interest in being provided with deployment updates. Individuals who register with this facility will receive regular updates on progress on delivering in their local areas and specific updates on their own premises. I am advised by NBI that, as of 4 November 2020, almost 122,000 premises across 25 counties have been surveyed, which is ahead of target.
Surveys have been completed in the following areas across County Kildare: Killashee, Oughterard, Naas rural, Rathmore, Eadestown, Kill, Kilteel, Carnalway, Gilltown, Ballymore Eustace, Bodenstown, Naas urban, Newtown and Donaghcumper. The next step is for National Broadband Ireland to develop network designs to deliver the new fibre to the home network to these premises, followed by pre-build and build works.
Broadband connection points are a key element of the national broadband plan, NBP, providing high speed broadband in every county in advance of the roll-out of the fibre to the home network. As of 30 October, 187 sites have been installed with service provider contracts being done by the Department of Rural and Community Development for publicly available sites and by the Department of Education for schools.
Rathmore National School and St. David's National School in County Kildare will be connected for educational access as part of this initiative by the end of the year. My Department continues to work with the Department of Education to prioritise other schools with no high speed broadband within the intervention area for connection over the term of the national broadband plan.
I thank the Minister and for his engagement on the previous day also. He is very on the ball on this issue and his geography is spot-on today so there are no issues in that regard. Rather than repeat what was said in the debate last week I will focus on a different aspect today. The national broadband plan is under way, which is great, and we want it to happen as quickly and effectively as possible, but is there merit in also looking at measures to complement that and to make it easier for private or public providers to get in alongside that to allow for greater coverage penetration? In the previous Dáil I introduced the broadband planning framework Bill to enable that. It was working its way through the Houses before the Dáil was dissolved. The type of things it sought to do included planning synchronisation across different planning authorities; a register of assets that would be maintained by the Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg; a central depository where kit and infrastructure would be re-used if it is already in place; mandating site sharing so if there is already a mast or a duct on a particular hillside or road it would be re-used rather than reinventing the wheel; and ducting to the door, which may be of interest to the Minister, in that a change in the planning mandate that ducting be provided to the door be part of that new build planning framework.
The Deputy is absolutely right that we should not simply rest on our laurels or wait for the national broadband plan and not do anything else. There are large areas in other parts of the country not in the intervention area and we have to have an eye on them. Competition does help here, particularly where a technology evolves. There may be innovation occurring in fixed wireless or other wireless systems that may even move into areas we had not expected. We should certainly encourage and support that without interfering directly in the market.
The way the national broadband area is configured is, by tradition, more rural. In terms of the way the previous agreement was done with Eir, the first surrounding area around a town would typically be an Eir area where it is rolling out high speed broadband very successfully, even if its customer service is letting it down. The area beyond that then is the national broadband area. It is not just the national broadband plan. We also tend to have Eir doing the hinterland area around most towns. In the larger towns and cities we tend to have competition, be it from the cable provider or a range of different providers including SIRO, Eir and a number of others, so it would be more difficult in rural Ireland. That is why the national broadband plan is there but we may see other potential providers.
I welcome the Minister's interest in considering other possible options. A parallel path could be mapped out. The NBP is providing broadband to as much of the country as it can, particularly in those rural areas, but there is nothing stopping us from facilitating others in that regard. I welcome the Minister's commitment to accommodate competition in that space because I believe that competition lifts all boats. It is important to have a technology mix also because the NBP is predicated upon a fibre infrastructure, which we know is currently the scientifically fastest option, but from a practical point of view I refer to the likes of fixed wireless, which the Minister mentioned, although not satellite, which can create an expense. Other options that may be able to get services to certain areas faster, albeit that fibre is the ultimate choice, may be coming down the track at a later stage but getting a better service to certain areas sooner and then having fibre coming in in due course is something to keep an eye on.
I fully agree that there are developments in fixed wireless and other non-fibre based solutions but that is what we have gone for with the national broadband plan. It is largely fibre based. I remember talking to the engineers around the configuration of that. They found it was optimal in terms of meeting the needs of the national broadband plan. There was not a blind spot ruling out fixed wireless but if I remember rightly they found a difficulty with the configuration, particularly of our pole network along the roads, and getting an equivalent high quality provision using fixed wireless. No matter how many shared masts or other fixed wireless configurations there were they found it very difficult to get the coverage in with the dispersed nature in hollows, behind hills and so on in terms of one-off rural housing. That is why the fixed fibre option was the one picked.
We are running out of time. I want to go to Question No. 108. We have a short amount of time for Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh to ask her question.
