Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and his officials. I refer to the €15 million of the €20 million allocated in 2017 for the national broadband plan. Does the Minister consider the money to be adequate if the procurement process will be closed this year, as he said it would be? The earlier false dawns were not the fault of the Minister, but the programme for Government stated this was all supposed to happen late last year. The process then carried over into this year because, we were told, it is very complicated from a legal point of view. Will the €15 million be adequate to complete the procurement process this year? I am concerned about the timeline.

In terms of the national broadband plan, I have looked at the map that was given to us last week carefully, in particular the breakdown by county. Eir and the Department may say they are not cherry-picking, but in my county or the one next door, Kildare, in particular south Kildare, I can see on the map the heavy blue sections where it is commercially viable to provide broadband. The light blue sections show where Eir will provide broadband on a commercial basis.

I am very happy that more people will get broadband, because more people need to be connected. I can clearly identify from the maps the pockets of population in terms of towns, villages and large-scale developments. People outside of those areas are outside of the broadband system. Large tracts of land, including some in the Minister's constituency, will not be covered.

I know Eir is exercised about what I have said, which is fair enough. There are three commercial bidders. If the rich pickings in areas that are easy to get to are taken out of the equation, it causes a difficulty in terms of the overall tendering process and the level of interest from other bidders. I ask the Minister to clarify whether contact has been made by the other two bidders regarding the commercial or legal difficulties that may arise on the back of the decision and announcement.