Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

The main progress this year is that the first connections are happening this month and will continue over the coming months. In particular counties there will be locations around Cork, Ballinasloe, Cavan and Limerick that will see several thousand premises getting a fibre to the home connection in the next couple of months. The good news is those premises will get a service of at least 500 Mbps; it is not an "up to" service. Businesses will get 1 Gbps and more. That will happen at prices equivalent to those available in urban areas.

There is a target of 70,000 connections and the initial targets in the contract were higher. There is a slight delay of a few months and there have been significant challenges, as alluded to by Mr. Griffin, in all construction contracts across the country due to Covid-19. Even in recent weeks this has been a real challenge, given the number of staff across the country either in isolation or who have Covid-19. That has presented many challenges, but notwithstanding those, there will be more than 70,000 premises connected across many counties.