Mr. T.J. Malone:

At the end of the year, we would hope to have in the region of 115,000 to 120,000 premises, but we had always intended to be ahead so that if we met complications on the build at any stage down the road in any area, we would have a number of different designs on the shelf that we could just pick, move or change so they would not impact on the programme. We did not intend to be at the run rate of 17,500; it would have been a lesser run rate. We are now well ahead from the survey point of view.

That leads into the design. Again, we were late getting there, but we have caught up. The design is late starting. We are now at 92,000 premises, which is well ahead of schedule as well. When I say 92,000 designed, what happens is that our design partners take the information gathered from the surveys, analyse it and come back to us with detailed designs. When that comes into NBI, we look at it along with our internal engineers and designers, and there is back and forth between the designers until we get what we believe is a quality plan with which we want to proceed. There are 20,000 of them and 19,500 are currently under construction across five different employment areas. We believe that by the end February, we will be at a run rate of between 7,000 and 10,000 homes being ready for connection, where we have built ready for connection. By the end of 2021, we will be at between 105,000 and 115,000 premises. We will have caught up on the build at that stage as well.

While we had initial problems, we have caught up on the first two parts of it and we are catching up on the build as well.