Dr. Stjohn O'Connor:

It is intended that we will have about 300 broadband connection points. I will give the Deputy some of the backstory to explain where we are with the BCPs and how new BCPs can come into the process. Since we started the BCP process a few years ago, a number of sites have come in and dropped off because at that stage there was no process as such. It was just an expression of interest and once the contract was signed, we quickly moved to firm that up by putting an agreement in place. That process is working. NBI connects the site to make it ready for service and then it gets handed over to our regional service provider, which is Vodafone. As of last week, Vodafone has connected 99 broadband connection points. There will be an update to the NBI map in the coming weeks, with the intention that all the remaining sites will be connected before the end of quarter 1 next year. The crews are working away and connecting between five and 15 sites each week, depending on the number of crews and sites. There are a number of complexities before a site gets handed over to the Department and Vodafone, which involves all the backhaul licensing. As it is a wireless link, all of that has to be put in place before the site is ready for us. From our perspective, the process is pretty quick once we get the site. Vodafone goes out on the site, connects it and it usually goes live within two or three days.

As to where we are at now, we have 260-odd sites that have gone into the system and will be connected over the next period. We still have a number of slots available. I am pleased to advise members that broadband officers have been particularly active in recent weeks and months in identifying new sites. We are approving sites on a week-by-week basis and pushing them through to get priced up and approved by the NBI and the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications. They then come back to us and we approve them for Vodafone to connect. We have still some remaining capacity for new BCPs but I am pleased to say that capacity is diminishing all the time as new sites are identified. We are particularly focused on sites that would provide remote working. That is a ministerial priority, one which the Minister has been expressed a number of times. Many of the newer sites coming on board will have that capability.

The way in which the BCP project has evolved has been interesting. From the get-go, it was all about community benefit but it was not only restricted to economic benefit. I referred to cultural activities and ehealth opportunities. These are all important. When Covid hit it changed everything about how we roll out the BCPs. The increase in the number of locations that we were interested in pursuing for remote working from 20 or 30 to probably 70 to 80, with the vagaries of how we would connect them and the different technical kit that needs to go into those sites, has proven to be something of a challenge. The NBI has done really well. Vodafone has done an extremely good job to be able to respond to that and put in place an infrastructure that will be future-proofed. To take the example of the BCP in Tulsk in County Roscommon, it is up and running and we are working with it. It is looking for a technically advanced solution because it is a remote facility and an incubator unit. The solution we need to put in there is much different from what would be needed in a community centre in a more rural part of Ireland.

We still have a capacity if Deputies are interested. We have broadband officers in each local authority and they are the first point of contact. If members know of a location that could be a BCP, they should contact their local broadband officer and there is a application process which we would then approve.

The Deputy asked if there were plans for additional remote working hubs. That is a good question. What the WDC identified in the advanced economic corridor area was approximately 70 hubs that it knew of and that figure grew to 114 by the time it finished its data collection exercise. The interdepartmental working group is in the middle of a data collection exercise. We recently wrote to all local authorities, Enterprise Ireland, which is a member of the National Association of Community Enterprise Centres, NACEC, and other organisations looking for the first pass in terms of what hubs are out there. By our reckoning, we expect there will be more than 400 hubs across the country.

I noted that most local authorities have sought to develop new hubs. It is not something we in the Department are proactively seeking to do but, given the massive infrastructure of hubs that are in place, part of the exercise we are doing is to categorise them in the first instance to know what they are doing and to consider how we can ensure we have the right hubs in the right locations for the right purposes. That is the where it gets interesting when we look at it as more of a nuanced picture. Rather than everybody looking to build hubs, everybody should be looking to build the right hub in the right location for the local community. At this point, we do not have that feasibility. We have not collected all the data, which are still drifting back to us. We expect that by the end of quarter 1 and into quarter 2 of next year we will be in a position to publish a map that will give us a clear indication of what is out there. As we move forward and through next year, we will build up that picture. We will send out a questionnaire to every hub and gather all those data. We will then be able to plot them into the five levels of categorisation which I included on the slide. That gives us a very good data set from which to start looking at this as a national network.

I referred to the idea of a common booking platform. One of the most interesting questions is how we will develop that network into a national asset. We do that by using the same tools. Imagine that regardless of where one lives in Ireland, one could use an app to book a seat anywhere and this would be done using the same platform. That is our ambition and where we want to get to. We will be using the Atlantic economic corridor hub network to trial all of that before we roll it out nationally.

The Deputy asked about accelerating the roll-out of broadband. Unfortunately, that is a matter for the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications rather than us. We have all seen the public statements but I know no more than the members in that regard.