Mr. Peter Hendrick:

If I go back to 2015, the then Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources ran a consultation with the industry to see what companies were delivering. The definition of high-speed broadband then was anything above 30 Mbps. Any premises with less than that speed was deemed to be in the intervention or amber area. The overall number in that category was 900,000. As the programme of procurement and bidding continued, the Department continually engaged with the industry concerning activity around the construction of commercial networks. In 2016, Eir announced it was going to complete 300,000 premises, predominantly in townland areas, by replacing its old copper-based network with one based on fibre. Ultimately, that network would deliver more than the 30 Mbps speed to those homes. In the final consultation run by the Department in quarter 4 of 2019, the final assessment for the overall number of premises at that stage was 537,000.