Alex White (Dublin South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The national broadband scheme largely comprises the MANs. We can certainly fill out some of the detail on that for the Deputy if he wants, but it is what we are dealing with in respect of the national broadband scheme as opposed to the national broadband plan, which the Deputy then went on to discuss. The approach of identifying areas which there is no question of the commercial sector ever attending to is exactly the one we have taken. The mapping exercise we undertook and the map we published in November 2014 showed where we judge it will be necessary for the State intervention to occur. That refers to the so-called amber area. On the coloured map, blue will be the private sector in its many manifestations and amber is where we judge we will need to go. It is important to emphasise that we do not make those decisions based only on the private sector saying "Hey, this is what we think we will and will not do". A big part of our work is assessing that and the validity and reliability of information furnished to us by the private sector on its plans. I was asked earlier what the Department was doing and that is one of the big things we have to do week in and week out. We make judgments on it and meet with the commercial sector operators before sending them back to get more information in order to understand all of the information available, apply our own judgment and then map it.

We had a public consultation on the map and are now updating it. People may ask why. We are updating it to take into consideration new information received or operator announcements that have been made in respect of new plans for 2016 and beyond. When I was addressing Senator Mooney earlier, we talked about the 30%. I said there was a possibility that the 30% figure could reduce. That is the process we are engaged in. It may not reduce substantially, but we think it might reduce somewhat. We will then be able to show the committee a somewhat reduced amber area in terms of the State intervention. When the Deputy says there are areas that could never be the subject of questioning, he is right. The problem is that this is a whole project that will go to procurement. There will be a somewhat complex tendering process in terms of how operators will indicate they can deliver this minimum of 30 MB right across the contract area. As such, it is not really possible for us to do this by dividing it up into small units. We cannot say we know this particular island is never going to be in the blue area so let us get going with it. It is just not amenable to being done that way, it must be done as a single project.