Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

As the appropriation account for Vote 29 shows, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications incurred expenditure of €53.5 million in 2020, in respect of its subhead A3 information and communications technology programme. This represented just under 50% of the €106.8 million that was available for spending under the subhead in 2020, the majority of which was earmarked for the national broadband plan.

A note to the account states that the underspend of €53.6 million was due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the original expected roll-out of the broadband plan. Delays in the planned roll-out continued in 2021. This was reflected in the annual target set for the cumulative number of premises able to avail of the broadband service. As indicated in the Revised Estimates Volume for 2021, the target set initially was that 102,000 premises would be able to avail of service by December 2021. This target was revised down during the year to a total of 60,000 premises.

As we heard this morning, the total number of premises within the implementation area passed by the end of 2021 was just over half of that level. The target indicated in the Revised Estimates Volume for 2022 is to have a total of 130,000 premises able to avail of the broadband service by December of this year. The 2020 outturn in relation to the broadband plan expenditure was €51.4 million. This included payments to the main contractor, amounting to €42.5 million and payments for advisory services related to the contract, totalling €8.9 million. The projected total cost of payments to the main contractor, as at 31 December 2020, was €2.764 billion of which an estimated €2.72 billion was outstanding at the year end.