Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Before we move on to the Department, I want to concentrate for a minute on the issue Senator Wall has raised and deal with both responses we have got. I will give an example. A constituent of mine placed an order in May. I have been on to NBI, which has been very helpful on this matter, but as far as it is concerned, the order was registered on 2 August. Clearly, the system whereby an order is made and registered with NBI is falling down. The order was registered with NBI on 2 August. I do not know why there was a delay. On 10 August, the connection was paused due to a redesign. Every single one of this person's neighbours has already been connected. The survey and design has been completed and yet we had to go back to a redesign. On five occasions, KN Circet has called out. The update that this family received was from the engineer who called out on the road. They did not get text messages or regular updates, but an update from the engineer. I have another case I will talk about later. The response from that KN Circet engineer was that the family should contact their local councillor or Deputy. There is something fundamentally wrong in the communication if the agents of NBI are telling the public to contact councillors or Deputies to try to find out when they are going to get a connection. That is the first issue.

The second issue is that raised by Senator Wall. We have targets in place for passing premises. Mr. Malone spoke about them earlier. It is hoped that we will be back on target by the end of next year. I know from my own negotiations that there are targets for connection times under the Eir contract. Under the national broadband plan, is there a target time for when an order is placed and when a connection to the door takes place? If so, what is that target? Is NBI meeting that target at the moment? If not, what is it achieving at present? This is becoming a more consistent problem. Senator Wall and I, and our colleagues, are receiving messages about it. I can understand that there are technical issues involved in this but people have already been paid to go out and map the thing. We know where the issues are. Given that 60,000 homes have been connected at this stage, if there is a problem with the survey and design, surely this must have been flagged up already and is being reorganised to ensure we can minimise these delays or the number of homes where this arises. Will the witnesses clarify that please?