Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 13 October 2022

Public Accounts Committee

2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan

9:30 am

Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

To clarify, the schools programme was accelerated. The 679 schools were in the original 2019 plan, which envisaged delivery by 2026. A decision was made last year, because it is critical to have broadband in schools, to bring forward the deadline. In order to do that, we had to deploy a wireless network in the first instance to many of the schools. As the Secretary General said, this will be delivered by December, as promised. Some schools will get fibre because they are part of a deployment area that is to get fibre by next June, so it would have made no sense to supply a wireless network in parallel. That would have cost extra money.

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