Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The end of January estimate is for 59,000. The latest I heard was that 30,000 people are available for order or pre-order at this stage. I do not foresee the projected figure being achieved. I went to a board meeting of National Broadband Ireland, NBI, in County Clare two weeks ago. It was the first time in nearly two years the board of the company, which is the supplier that will be building this broadband network, met in County Clare. I met the board to state I am having difficulty with the figures being supplied and that they are far behind what the company is supposed to have done within the year. The pandemic and the restrictions on travel and building and so on did affect delivery, but that is not the whole story. It does not account for the volume of reductions we have seen. As a result, there are three mechanisms whereby penalties will be applied to the contract.

More important, we need to get the contract back on track. As such, my focus at the moment is to see how quickly we can get back onto the original curve of the roll-out and how we can accelerate it. With that in mind, I will meet the chief executives and chairmen of Eir and NBI to try to facilitate some kind of improvement in their working relationship so that we can see an acceleration, or certainly get back on track. Overall, the national broadband plan is a seven-year project with a €2.7 billion contract. I am sure it will be completed on time and on budget, but the question relates to the interim targets and the milestones along the way that had to be put back into position.