National Broadband Plan

Thursday, 7 April 2022

Questions (99)

Ruairí Ó Murchú

Question:

99. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications the status of the roll-out of the National Broadband Plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18856/22]

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Written answers

Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications

A combination of commercial investment and the State led intervention under the National Broadband will ensure access to high speed broadband in every part of Ireland. At the end of 2021 ComReg reported that total broadband subscriptions stood at 1.93m subscriptions, 87% of which had speeds equal to or greater than 30Mbps. The data clearly demonstrates the demand for high speed broadband services where these are available. A number of commercial operators have also announced further investment plans in fibre broadband networks. Eir has said it will roll out fibre to 1.9 million premises by the end of 2026, while SIRO has announced a €620 million upgrade and expansion of its fibre to the home network to reach 770,000 homes and business. Virgin Media has announced a €200 million investment to upgrade its network for 1 million premises over the next three years. Many other network operators and telecom service providers across the State also continue to invest in their networks.

As outlined in my reply to today's Priority Question from Deputy O’Rourke, National Broadband Ireland (NBI) continues to make steady progress on the rollout of the NBP State led intervention, with almost 316,000 premises surveyed, almost 166,000 premises under construction or complete across 26 counties and over 62,000 premises now available to order or pre-order across 22 counties. NBI has also confirmed that over 41,000 premises are now passed across 19 counties and are available for immediate connection.

The Department has worked with NBI to agree an Updated Interim Remedial Plan (UIRP) which recalibrates the targets for 2022 to take account of the knock-on effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and other delays to the Programme, with a revised target of 102,000 premises to be passed by the end of January 2023 (Contract Year 3).

Question No. 100 answered orally.