Sorca Clarke
Question:221. Deputy Sorca Clarke asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications for an update on any improvements in speed of the national broadband roll out in Castletown Geoghegan. [12477/25]
View answerWednesday, 19 March 2025
Questions (221)
Written answers
The National Broadband Plan (NBP) is the Government's initiative to deliver high speed broadband services to all premises in Ireland. The Programme for Government – Securing Ireland’s Future published in January 2025 sets a number of targets which include the completion of the infrastructure to allow access to a high-speed fibre broadband to 1.1 million people, including homes, farms, and businesses nationwide, by 2026.
The Castletown Geoghegan area is largely in the BLUE area on the broadband map which is available on my Department's website www.gov.ie/en/publication/5634d-national-broadband-plan-map/.
The BLUE area represents those areas where commercial providers are either currently delivering or have plans to deliver high-speed broadband services. The Department defines high-speed broadband as a connection with minimum speeds of 30Mbps download and 6 Mbps upload.
The AMBER area on the map is to be served by the network deployed under the NBP State led intervention. The surrounding area around the village of Castletown Geoghegan which is in the Amber area was fibre enabled by NBI in December 2024 to January 2025.
The activities of commercial operators delivering high-speed broadband within BLUE areas are not planned or funded by the State and the Department has no statutory authority to intervene in that regard.
There may be a choice of operators offering this service in any given area. Further information in this regard is available at www.comreg.ie/compare/#/services.
As per records available online the Castletown Geoghegan area has been included in open eir’s Full Fibre deployment programme which provides a full fibre Gigabit connection and premises in the area can now order full fibre gigabit connection with speeds up to 2 Gbps.
This information and details of retail broadband providers who deliver broadband to premises in the blue area can be found on the Open eir website at open-eir.webflow.io/fibre/broadband-checker.
If a person after contacting their Retail Service Provider are told they cannot get access to greater than 30Mbps, they should raise a query via the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC) webform, at secure.dccae.gov.ie/forms/NBP-Customer-Service.aspx, and the Department will escalate with the commercial operator to investigate this matter further.