Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Minister a good afternoon and I thank him for coming in. My questions are broadly covered at this stage but I have a few points. On subhead D3, national broadband, it would be really good to get some breakdown on the figures the Minister provided which state that NBI hopes to get to just over 50% by the end of the year. I think the Minister mentioned 300,000. I assume that leaves in and around 250,000 - or thereabouts - homes and businesses across the State that are not yet connected. Could the Minister give us an indication, based on the rate at which homes and businesses across the State have been able to connect already, as to how many more years it will take approximately before the overall project is complete?

On subhead D6, the NCSC, my question was going to be about the recruitment, which I think Deputy Kenny covered, to be fair, and whether we would be successful in being able to hit the necessary targets with respect to resource management and expertise.

Perhaps we can come back to the situation with the contractor at a later stage.

I do not mean to be flippant about the emergency alert system, subhead D7, but are we talking about the kind of thing we see in the movies whereby everybody gets a text message to tell them something is going on during a national crisis? Is that the sort of idea behind this project?

The Minister made reference to quantum communications. Perhaps he could give a little more information as to what that is. He will have to forgive me but I am not familiar with the term.