The Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) aims to ensure high speed broadband access (minimum 30 megabits per second) to all premises in Ireland, regardless of location. The NBP has been a catalyst in encouraging investment by the telecoms sector so that today over 67% of the 2.3m premises in Ireland have access to high speed broadband and this is set to increase to 77% (1.8m premises) by the end of 2018 and to 90% (2.1m premises) by the end of 2020. In April 2017, I signed a Commitment Agreement with eir in relation to its plans to provide high speed broadband to 300,000 premises in rural areas on a commercial basis. eir has committed to completing the rollout by the end of 2018. Information on eir's planned rural deployment is available at http://fibrerollout.ie/eircode-lookup/. A copy of the Commitment Agreement is available on my Department’s website www.dccae.gov.ie.
According to my Department’s high speed broadband map, available at www.broadband.gov.ie, less than 1% of premises in South Dublin County Council are in areas which have yet to receive a high speed broadband connection as part of eir’s planned rural deployment.
In October 2017 I asked that local authority Broadband Officers identify candidate premises for inclusion in the eir 300k rollout based on guideline criteria. This information was submitted via my Department to eir on the 13th of November 2017 for assessment, which is ongoing. Decisions on the inclusion of any individual premises remain a matter for eir. Any premises not covered by commercial operators private investment will be included in the State led NBP Intervention.
