Mr. Patrick Neary:

The blue areas are primarily urban or suburban areas where there is a high density of premises. They are areas which should be served by commercial operators. It should not be the case that the State has to intervene to support a commercial operator in a densely populated area. We are continuing to monitor the plans that have been presented to us that are reaching fruition in the blue areas. There have been particular barriers or issues that operators encounter, primarily local issues, that, if unlocked, would allow the commercial operators to deploy to those areas.

One of the major initiatives launched to alleviate that has been the mobile phone and broadband task force and 40 actions have been identified through that task force. It was updated this year with further initiatives, including the appointment of a broadband officer to look at alleviating local issues and updating the planning exemptions for the deployment of telecoms infrastructure. We have come across premises in the centre of Dublin - one-off premises which are quite close to the building we are in at the moment - where the operator is willing to deploy but has found it cannot get through the planning process. By bringing people together we found a solution for those premises where they can locate a new cabinet or address an existing cabinet.

These issues arise as the operator tries to deploy. On the example I gave, where there is a premises that is very close to a cabinet - this is based on very old legacy data - the operator expects that the premises will receive high-speed broadband but it does not because it is connected to an exchange many kilometres away. We want to see if we can alleviate problems such as that. It is not the case that these are suitable for intervention because they are in such densely populated areas. In saying that, the contract and the initial strategy which was published provide that in the event that there are premises left behind, they could be added to the intervention area in due course. We have the ability, after the contract is awarded, to increase the number of premises. Our main tool, however, is to try to address the issues. We provided an email address at which the Deputies, or indeed the public, can highlight issues to us and we will continue to investigate them. We then engage with the industry and see how the issue might be alleviated.