Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 10 February 2022

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
National Broadband Plan Expenditure and Related Matters

9:30 am

Mr. Peter Hendrick:

This is across the country. Most of the urban areas probably have infrastructure that already is fit for purposes. However in the new areas we are going into, we have doubled Eir's capacity. Over a space of nine months they are going from just over 22,000 poles to more than 44,000 poles per annum. Even with that capacity, we have to spread it across all 26 counties. If we wanted to go faster, if we want to get this ultimately done faster, there are a couple of things we need. We need to have more poles replaced, which means more subcontractors which means more poling trucks, which is plant and machinery, to do all of the make-ready work first, before we ever come along to put the cable on the poles or under the ground. The survey and design is obviously the prerequisite of that. That is what we are feeding out to Eir in terms of the make-ready. There is a capacity restraint in terms of the number of poling trucks and resources available to do all of that work. To be fair, we have agreed with Eir, we have contracted with it to increase its capacity. We are spreading that capacity across all 26 counties and are trying to do it on an equal basis.

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