Mr. Brendan Whelan:

The Department co-funds the role of the broadband officer in each of the 31 local authorities. They tend to be the single point of contact for citizens, public representatives such as the committee members and telecoms operators who are trying to get work done. We provide the funding and require certain conditions to be met for that. They must be full time in the role, they must meet the requirements set out in the role profile and so forth. At this moment, we have responses from the local authorities that 22 of these officers are confirmed and that they have them in place. That is not to say that the other officers are not there; it is just that those local authorities have not come back to us to confirm it with regard to the funding at this point. We are pursuing them to follow up on that to see exactly where they are. A few of the local authorities are carrying vacancies for some time but the vast bulk of local authorities have a broadband officer in place.