Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 28 September 2021
213. Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications the projected percentage of homes in the National Broadband Plan intervention areas that will be connected to fibre broadband under the plan in each county in each of the years 2021 to 2025, in tabular form. [45989/21]
View answer215. Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications the projected percentage of homes in the National Broadband Plan interventions areas that will be connected to fibre broadband under the plan in each county in each of the years 2021 to 2025, in tabular form. [46018/21]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 213 and 215 together. The National Broadband Plan (NBP) State led Intervention will be delivered by National Broadband Ireland (NBI) under a contract to roll out a high speed and future proofed broadband network within the Intervention Area which covers 1.1 million people living and working in the over 544,000 premises, including almost 100,000 businesses and farms along some 699 schools. The NBP roll out is currently a 7 year plan under the contract and deployment is due to be complete by the end of 2026.
I am advised by NBI that, as of 17 September, over 250,000 premises across all counties have been surveyed with over 108,000 premises under construction in Counties Cork, Cavan, Galway, Limerick and Monaghan.
In addition to the challenges to the delivery of the NBP due to the Covid-19 pandemic, NBI has faced a range of other challenges due to the sheer scale and complexity of rolling out fibre to the home in a rural environment. These include significant tree trimming to ensure cable can be placed on overhead poles, remediation of ducting that has been in place for many decades, the co-ordination of hundreds of contracting crews and addressing the many issues arising week on week which could not have been foreseen until the build crews commenced work on the ground. My Department has worked closely with NBI to put in place a remedial plan under the Contract. This plan addresses delays experienced by NBI, primarily arising as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and re-baselines milestones for 2021. Work is underway to re-baseline milestones for 2022 and beyond.
The network rollout for the National Broadband Plan is divided into 227 Deployment Areas (DAs) across the country. These are typically an area of approximately 25km in radius and in total they cover 96% of Ireland’s landmass. The architecture of the network design is specifically based on the design of the NBI network coming from the eir exchanges or the state owned metropolitan area networks (MANs). It is based on an engineering design that allows NBI to get to every premises as quickly as possible working within the confines of how fibre networks are built. Given the nature of the build and ongoing work to address the impact of Covid-19 related delays, it is not possible to give specific details on a per county basis out to 2026. NBI has indicated that c. 130,000 to 145,000 premises will be passed across all counties over 2021 and 2022.
