Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of questions for Mr. Mulligan. On the dark blue area and Deputy Paul Donnelly's question regarding the pockmarks, let us consider the town of Ballinasloe and the Gaelscoil there. It is one of the priority areas. In the town of Ballinasloe, 2 Mbps is being received. The colour on the map is dark blue. It is amber in the area to which I wish to refer. There is one house on the housing estate that is amber. All of us know it is likely that there are more people on that housing estate who are not getting a minimum of 30 Mbps but, as far as the national broadband map is concerned, only one resident is going to get a fibre connection. What are we doing to highlight that among the residents in Ballinasloe? The fibre network is going to be built out in the second quarter of next year and when NBI moves on to the next location, it is going to be very hard to come back to the affected houses.

If those people try to sell those houses, they will not be able to give them away because no one will want to move into a house that does not have a basic level of broadband.

On the issue of the 30 Mbps test, when will that threshold up? A level of 30 Mbps now is like 2 Mbps was ten years ago. It is outdated with the demands that are being put on. When will we revise that up?

Can the witnesses explain the broken line between Roscommon and Castlerea? These high-speed connections to the schools are being rolled out, which is welcome, but 19 marts in the country do not have decent broadband. One of those happens to be in Castlerea, which probably has the worst broadband service of a mart on the country, with huge demands being put on it. Is there any chance we could service those 19 remaining marts around the country?

I have another question on the broadband task force. I am surprised to hear the task force did not meet this year, particularly when it is the liaison vehicle between the Government, the telecommunications sector and the local authorities and State agencies around the country, especially in the context of Covid-19. Everyone realised the challenge we have in our broadband and mobile networks on the night of "The Late Late Toy Show". If one happened to be on a Vodafone network, it went down on that occasion. According to the downdetector.iewebsite, one of our networks went down every second day during the most recent lockdown. Either our mobile, wireless or fixed broadband networks went down. Pressure is being put on those networks so what are we doing to try to address that, taking into account what the witnesses have detailed in their earlier evidence?