Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

The black spots mentioned, if they are in a national park, will take time to get addressed by 5G. Remote rural areas that may be behind a hill or around mountains are very difficult to get to. We will not have a plethora of towers and masts all over the place. In fairness to the mobile companies, it is difficult infrastructure to build to get to unique, one-off housing, if that is the main issue. The new 5G licences have different criteria around them to deal with motorways and national roads and make sure coverage is on those, which did not apply under previous licensing arrangements in 4G and 3G.

There have been a number of improvements under the new licensing arrangements, which were issued by ComReg only earlier this year. These are being rolled out only now by the three main companies, Vodafone, Eir and Three. As I said in my opening statement, we have got to 70% and we are getting towards 80% and 90%. They have not got there yet but that will happen over the next few years.

The target is 2030 by which to get to all populated areas with 5G. AsMr. Hendrick noted, the roll-out of the NBP is going to help with coverage because, under the NBP, as we are bringing fibre throughout these rural roads, mobile companies can go to NBI and seek coverage for fibre to towers and masts on the hills and mountains to improve the coverage and capacity as they roll out their equipment. It is organically getting better and will get better over the coming years. Through the commercial roll-out and the new licensing arrangements ComReg has put in place, it is incrementally improving this year, next year and the year after that, although there are still problems as of today.