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National Broadband Plan

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 28 July 2020

Tuesday, 28 July 2020

Ceisteanna (101)

Seán Sherlock

Ceist:

101. Deputy Sean Sherlock asked the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment his views on the National Broadband Plan. [18314/20]

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Freagraí scríofa

The National Broadband Plan (NBP) is the Government’s plan to rollout high speed broadband to the 1.1 million people living and working in the nearly 540,000 premises including almost 100,000 businesses and farms, along with 695 schools where commercial operators will not commit to deliver the service. The NBP State led Intervention will be delivered by National Broadband Ireland (NBI) under a contract signed on 19 November last.   The NBP network will offer users a high speed broadband service with a minimum download speed of 150Mbps from the outset. By the end of next year, NBI plans to pass in the region of 115,000 premises, with 70,000 - 100,000 passed each year thereafter until rollout is completed. All counties will see premises passed in the first 2 years and over 90% of premises in the State will have access to high speed broadband within the next four years. Design work is complete or ongoing in target townlands across 17 counties and steady progress is being made with circa 55,000 premises surveyed to date. This survey work is feeding into detailed designs for each deployment area and laying fibre should commence shortly with the first fibre to the home connections expected around December this year.

The Covid 19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of good reliable broadband to ensure that citizens across Ireland can avail of remote working, education and other essential online facilities. Recognising this, the Programme for Government commits to seek to accelerate the roll out of the National Broadband Plan. The Programme for Government also recognises that the NBP will be a key enabler to many of the policies envisaged particularly around increased levels of remote working and remote service delivery.

My Department is currently engaging with NBI to explore the feasibility of accelerating aspects of the NBP rollout and bring forward premises which are scheduled in years 6 and 7 of the current plan to an earlier date. These discussions are ongoing and a preliminary position will be arrived at by the end of the summer.

To support remote working and rural connectivity, locations for up to 300 Broadband Connections Points (BCPs) have been identified by Local Authorities. The BCP delivery project is well underway and connectivity is being provided to each of the sites by National Broadband Ireland (NBI). Subsequent to this, the sites, other than schools, are being Wi-Fi enabled by Vodafone under a contract with the Department of Rural and Community Development. This work also involves the local authorities and site owners determining the services that will be provided for end-users at each site. For the 75 schools that are also part of this project, enabling these schools with Wi-Fi is being led by the Department of Education following NBI providing the connectivity to the schools.

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