Mr. Mark Griffin:

As someone who was born and reared outside Dublin, albeit that I have lived and worked here for over 30 years, I still have plenty of relatives down the country and every time I visit them I get it in the neck about the national broadband plan. It is a project which for a whole range of reasons is very dear to my heart. I know it is among the top priorities for the Minister.

The national broadband plan needs to be considered in its broadest sense. This involves both what the commercial sector is doing and what the State plans to do. Part of our effort over the past couple of years has been on enabling the commercial sector to be involved to a greater extent in the provision of broadband infrastructure. For example, I refer to the work carried out last year in bringing forward legislation to allow ESB engage in the provision of broadband infrastructure. Next week, ESB and Vodafone will launch their joint venture which will set out the first 50 towns where they plan to invest and which will benefit under the joint venture programme.

One also needs to consider what the other big players in the sector are doing. There has been a substantial increase in what Eircom had originally targeted to do when the national broadband plan was rolled out in 2012. The footprint of the Eircom plan which it indicated covering under its NGA programme was approximately 1.2 million households. This has increased to approximately 1.6 million, if not more. There has been very significant progress in the private sector in terms of the commercial interventions.

Looking at what the Government needs to do, the Minister published a national high speed coverage map last November which set out where the commercial sector was going to intervene by 2016 and what the State needed to do under it its own intervention strategy. The coverage map is divided in two. A blue area reflects where the commercial sector will intervene and an amber area reflects where the State needs to intervene. Effectively, there is a 70:30 split between the commercial and State interventions. Approximately 700,000 properties need to be covered in the State intervention. It covers 96% of the land area of the State. The commercial companies will invest where it is commercially viable to do so. Therefore, the main focus is on the towns and the larger villages. The map was published at the end of November 2014. Public consultation on the map was initiated at that stage and closed on 12 February 2015. We received 29 submissions and these are being assessed.