Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 June 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland

Mr. Peter Hendrick:

Milestone No. 2. Milestone No. 1 is that Mr. Malone's team will do designs for the deployment area. Once the designs are verified and approved by the Department and an independent certifier, it sends us what is called a milestone achievement certificate. We have committed contractually that we will hit certain milestone achievements within this year. We do the designs and we hand them to the Department. Currently, we are ahead of the milestone achievement certificates for design, so we are looking very good there. On the milestone achievement certificates for the build, which we call the M2s, once Mr. Malone's build is completed we have a lot of evidence we have to share with the Department about the build programme, the ability to connect homes and the costs. There is a huge amount of work which typically can take three to four months after completion of the build. The Department validates all that detail and then an independent certifier certifies that we have achieved everything we were supposed to in the contract. There are M2 dates in the contract and if we do not get those M2 dates or if some of them slip, we can be hit with penalties.

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