Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

Of the 27 islands - the guys here can confirm - the majority of them, except for Achill which has a land bridge, will be done with full fibre, from end to end. Valentia, which is currently going through a design, is planned to be full fibre, except there is an ongoing discussion with Kerry County Council regarding Valentia Bridge because it opens, and putting a cable over a bridge that opens could be problematic. There is a question as to whether Mr. Hendrick's solution of the point-to-point link versus a cable to Valentia is an option. These are the things we go through in design.

From the point of view of the Department, Mr. Hendrick is right. The contract requires the service to be equivalent of Dublin now and into the future, and once that is delivered to all the residents on the island, that is the contract fulfilled. As part of that proposal, NBI would have given my colleagues their proposed options, and the option of bringing full fibre from the mainland to the islands was looked into from a cost perspective, and mainly a time perspective. The cost perspective NBI put in front of us suggested that the cost of building a subsea cable from the mainland to the Aran Islands could be at least five to six times the cost of the solution they put on the table for the same outcome. From a costing point of view and a value-for-money perspective for the taxpayer, the proposal of one option versus the other was a no-brainer in the end because the solution was going to be the same under the technical proposal that was put forward.

On the time front, if we decided in the Department that we did not like NBI's point-to-point wireless, and we wanted a subsea cable, we would work under the new subsea cable regime through the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA. I know it fairly well because I am involved in the international project that EirGrid is building to France. Other projects are getting set funding to build to France, Spain and Portugal. There is also a secondary regime through MARA, where one has to go to An Bord Pleanála for cables under water, and do a lot of appropriate assessments and environmental assessments. It is a significant risk to getting broadband to those islands in a timely manner. We recently agreed that of the 27 islands, we will bring forward to 2025 and 2026 seven of them, I understand, that were due for completion in 2027. In the last couple of months we agreed a 12- to 14-month acceleration to islands. Again, that would only be possible with the point-to-point link from the mainland. If we were going down the route of a subsea cable, I fear that we would go years beyond even 2026 to get broadband to the islands. I think that not just the cost but the time is a very significant consideration if it was decided that subsea cables were required.

In the context of co-operation on energy and water, we are not aware of EirGrid or ESB having a plan to upgrade the islands at the moment. I am sure they will have to, given whatever capacity requirements they have. The age of those cables can run from 25 to 30 years, so I am sure they would have a replacement policy. If in the event that they do, at that point in time, of course there will be a discussion to put fibre cables on the same build because the incremental costs will be very little. For example, when EirGrid is doing its connection from Ireland to France, it is putting multiple fibres on the energy supply to ensure we can use those fibres. Again, that is part and parcel of the policy to get from Ireland to Europe with the capacity on subsea cables. Islands would be no different where, be it water or energy, the Department and other respective Departments - of course for energy, it is our own Department - will be liaising with those to make sure there is the maximum amount of infrastructure from the build. If it was one ship building the same cable and putting in extra fibre, the incremental cost would be very little. We just do not have a plan from ESB or EirGrid to do those projects.