Mr. Peter Hendrick:

Absolutely. Mr. Malone and I are proactively engaged with the GAA and the GAAGO team. We see there is absolute value in all communications using this broadband network, whether that is broadcast communications or general non-linear communications.

We certainly see the value of the fibre network. I agree with the Deputy. We have always been clear that the future of connectivity for consumers, businesses and farms is with a fibre access network. We looked at this. We spent quite a lot of time, particularly in the bid phase, looking at what the network is going to look like, what the bandwidth utilisation of that network is going to look like and what consumers will use that network for. When we launched, we originally started by talking about 150 Mbps and when we signed the contract, we were thinking about 150 Mbps being the launch product. On day one, by the time we were live with the network, we had actually pushed it to 500 Mbps. We have three services today, 500 Mbps, 1,000 Mbps and 2,000 Mbps, and we see quite a lot of interest in moving to that 1,000 Mbps service.

Of those 65 retail operators, we have 42 that are proactively selling different services, whether that is speed, voice, in-home television applications, broadband services or adding in mobile. Mobile coverage is critical to the people of rural Ireland. I believe the network we are building will support the future deployment of 5G networks to support that rural coverage requirement.

I will hand over to Mr. Malone to talk about the timelines between survey, design and the main build programme and when it will be ready for service. Ms Collins will explain where we are today with our stakeholder communications, how we manage this on the website and how we communicate with end-users and community groups.