Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 27 January 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland

Ms Tara Collins:

I thank Deputy Matthews for his question. We have been producing multiple case studies. If the Deputy takes a look at our YouTube channel, he will see case studies from schools that have been connected in a number of different locations. We did three case studies in different schools, including one in Laragh, County Wicklow.

We also recently announced a schools competition. We are running a competition across all of the primary schools in the intervention areas, which includes up to 700 schools, to get the children involved in imaging the future. We are doing much interaction with the schools. There are some great prizes, including the Promethean whiteboards, which work very well with high-speed broadband and will work offline as well, in the interim period. There is much interaction with the schools.

On the BCPs, likewise we have been going in and finding out what has been happening in the community. We did a case study recently with Obair, which is a social enterprise in Newmarket on Fergus. Again, it is up on our website if the Deputy would like to take a look. It has been able to develop an app for Meals on Wheels as a result of being connected to high-speed broadband. It is the first Meals on Wheels in the country that can now connect with its customers through this app to order meals. The plan is to roll that out across the country as well. We are looking at that and helping them to roll it out across the country.

There are some very good initiatives coming out of the BCP programme and the school programme as well.

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