Mr. Ciarán Ó hÓbáin:

I thank the Deputy very much and, again, I apologise. I will speak this way but it is an unusual setting in the room. We are normally sitting looking across at members.

To start, the revised target for this year is 60,000. That is contractualised with NBI and I believe that has been in place since May of this year. NBI appeared before the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications a month ago. It is NBI's role to deliver that target. It is our role to manage the contract and have oversight of that. That is something we do hour on hour, day on day and week on week. We take a very strong governance approach to it. We also take a collaborative approach in working with NBI in terms of where the Department and the State can be of assistance in trying to remedy issues.

On the Chairman's question and the figure of 130,000 for next year, that number is based on what National Broadband Ireland has communicated it will deliver in 2022. It said it would deliver between 70,000 and 84,000 premises next year, which is 130,000 to 144,000. That is what NBI recently told a committee of the Houses of the Oireachtas. Earlier this year, we agreed a remedial plan for 2021 with National Broadband Ireland. It has to submit a remedial plan with revised targets for 2022. We hope to receive that plan shortly. The target for 2022 agreed through that process will be contractualised. In terms of the budget and the number, it is based on the number that National Broadband Ireland has communicated it can deliver next year. It is a number we understand on the basis of the detailed engagement we have had with NBI.

In regard to staff, I will ask Mr. Mulligan to speak to what the contract expected at tender stage. The Deputy mentioned the Ahascragh issue. I will not provide an answer on that because to do so might be to breach protocol, in that the Minister will provide that answer later today by way reply to a parliamentary question. We receive hundreds of parliamentary questions per annum in regard to the national broadband plan, which demonstrates the importance of it. When it comes to responding to questions, I regularly seek detail on the circumstances of the inquiry. I have looked at Ahascragh. I am not sure that the response to the parliamentary question is actually a response to the issue there. It appears the entire village is in the blue area and that the premises which are in the national broadband plan area, which I think are on the road out to Fohanagh, are just outside of the village and, thus, they are in the amber area. It is potentially the case that the person who contacted the Deputy is in the village and is having a difficulty within the blue area in terms of service provision. It is a common issue that arises, one that we have to get behind. In terms of the parliamentary question, if the response provided does not address the issue, the Deputy might contact the Department directly and we can follow up on the matter.

I will ask Mr. Neary to respond on the question regarding details on the marts. If he does not have that information, we will forward a written response to the committee. In terms of the Castleplunket issue, I do not propose to go into the details of the case but I refer the Deputy to the point I raised earlier when answering questions from Deputy Ó Cuív, that is, you are in that difficult space where people want the maximum information you can give them today and yet you are in an imperfect world because, as outlined by Mr. Neary, there are people who are further down the line in terms of that seven-year programme where surveys may not have been carried out. The Deputy mentioned low-level design. When people have not gone out and walked the roads, worked out where the infrastructure is and figured out how it is proposed to bring broadband to a premises, what might have seemed intuitive at the tender stage changes when you get down to the detailed design. I will ask Mr. Neary to speak generally as to what he is seeing to date in relation to that issue.