Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Of course. I welcome the NBI team to the meeting and thank them for the regular updates we receive. They are really useful when we are meeting and dealing with constituents. Naturally, they all ask when they will get their high-speed broadband. Those updates are helpful in that, as was our recent visit to Kilcoole. As I am criss-crossing County Wicklow, I have learned to spot ducts up on poles so that I know houses have been passed. It has been very helpful in that.

I suppose we must think about what we are trying to do here. We are trying to bring high-speed fibre broadband to every premises, household, business and farm in the country. Fibre is the gold standard. There is nothing better than bringing fibre right to the house. It is a massive contract. It is huge. It is a €2.1 billion contract to make sure that everybody is connected. It is a massive job, but it brings huge benefits to everybody who gets connected. It brings an equity in communications that perhaps has not existed in rural areas for a long time, where they were previously not getting their fair share of investment. It seeks to balance that urban-rural divide that can sometimes exist. I have heard it compared to the rural electrification scheme. It is akin to that. It is that kind of level of investment we are trying to make here. It is complicated. NBI is trying to follow existing ducts, networks and poles, which in some ways has advantages but in other ways has disadvantages. Mr. Hendrick has spoken about the learning curve that NBI has experienced. Delays were incurred at the start but NBI has learned from that and expects the momentum to ramp up and speed up the delivery. I am looking at the figures for January 2022, as we sit here, with 54,500 premises currently able to place their order. If we are sitting here in January 2023, with the learning that NBI has done so far, what would Mr. Hendrick expect that figure to be?