Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

We are dealing with 544,000 premises, which is more than 20% of the population of Ireland. There are almost 2.4 million premises in Ireland and we are dealing with more than 540,000 of them as well as all new homes. We expect that over the next 25 years there will be an additional 60,000 or 80,000 new homes throughout rural Ireland. NBI will be effectively dealing with more than 600,000 homes over the next 25 years and they are all part of the contract.

The Senator asked whether fibre is guaranteed. Under our contract it is. Many providers will provide fibre and it still may be an "up to" service. Under the contract, NBI is not allowed to offer an "up to" service. It is required under contract to provide a fast reliable minimum speed of 500 Mb and whatever they tell the customers they are getting. From our perspective, it is guaranteed under the contract. I cannot speak for other companies in the market. Generally, if fibre is going directly from the exchange to the home it is as good as can be got in terms of broadband. It is future-proofed and can be upscaled. The fibre cable will last forever, barring storms or other such occurrences. The equipment can always be upgraded and that upgrade can take it from 500 Mb to 1,000 Mb to 10 Gb using the same cable. It will last forever. With regard to what its role is with 5G, fibre will be brought to masts and towers. We have a plethora of masts and towers throughout the country.

Some of them do not have fibre cable to them. They are using point-to-point links, which are resilient wireless networks, but fibre is a better network to bring to them. It provides more capacity and resilience given weather conditions and what not. There are economies of scale and scope for fibre networks as well. The more fibre there is across the country, the cheaper it might be to use those networks and consumers and businesses benefit.

Regarding the nearest broadband connection points, BCPs, in County Clare, there is an issue with BCPs generally across the country. BCP is the term we use but I will just use the terms Wi-Fi hubs and digital hubs. Our colleagues from the Department of Rural and Community Development were at a committee meeting a couple of weeks ago and they talked about that. The Department, in conjunction with local authorities and other partners, has a working group in place to look at digital hubs across the country. We are only dealing with digital hubs in the remotest areas. There is a digital hub initiative across the country. I think there are up to 1,000 digital hubs across the country but we are dealing with approximately 200 in our plan. There is an initiative now to bring all of those together. The Western Development Commission is doing significant work on that front. It is seeking to develop a website to act as a catch-all for digital hubs so that DIGICLARE does not stand on its own and one would have to go to the DIGICLARE website to see the four or five BCPs there, but one will see everything in County Clare, be it in towns, villages or in rural areas, and the same will be true for Donegal, Roscommon and everywhere else. That is a work in progress. The commission has been working on it all this year. Stephen Carolan and Deirdre Frost in the Western Development Commission have done significant work. I am optimistic that in the next 12 months a lot more will come out of that, and consumers and businesses will know exactly where it is at. I think the commission is looking at a website where one can book a table or desk online, regardless of where one is. A tourist or a person who wants to work in a hub will be looking at an Airbnb-type facility for someone who is going on holidays in Donegal who needs a hub to work in every two days. We hope the website will be available.

I think I answered the question on schools. Some schools will be done with fibre in the coming years. Others will be done with wireless rather than have them waiting for fibre for four or five years. We have brought it forward and we are going to give them a point-to-point resilient wireless connection for an interim period until we get the fibre. There is a mixture of wireless and fibre, but the broadband connection is very good and reliable.