Ms Carolan Lennon:

I thank the committee for the invitation to attend today's meeting to discuss improvements in high-speed broadband availability across Ireland and the investment that Eir is making in its network. As the Chairman has already said, I am joined by Mr. Gary Healy who is our director of regulatory and public policy and is a member of the senior management team at Eir. Members have been provided with additional material by way of a written submission and we are happy to take questions from members on any of that material.

Members will be aware that Eir is the principal provider of fixed line and mobile telecommunications services in Ireland. The company has approximately 2 million customers and operates the most extensive network in the country providing a range of advanced voice, data, broadband and ICT services to the residential, small business, enterprise and public sector markets. Open Eir is the largest wholesale operator in Ireland, providing products and services to more than 40 wholesale customers and 400,000 end users across a range of regulated and unregulated markets. Eir is also a major contributor to the Irish economy, spending over €1 billion annually.

In April 2018, a consortium led by the NJJ group, which is owned by the French telecoms entrepreneur Xavier Niel, completed the purchase of Eir, which has led the company into a period of exciting development and innovation. The NJJ team has a wealth of international telecommunications experience, which is already proving to be of huge benefit to both Eir and its customers. The group has a proven track record of investment in telecoms infrastructure and enhanced customer propositions. My appointment as CEO was accompanied by the appointment of Mr. David McRedmond as Chairman and soon after that by the appointment of my management team and a new majority Irish board of directors. The new management team exemplifies our dynamic transformation, our focus on our network and customers and on our continued success in the Irish market. I am also delighted to say that all members of the management team, with one exception, have been promoted from within the company and we now have an equal female to male split on the team.

We invest substantially in our network and no other telecoms company in Ireland is anywhere close to matching Eir’s historical level of investment in networks right across the country. In the past five years, Eir has invested €1.5 billion of its own capital in its infrastructure across Ireland, more than any other national telecom operator in Europe relative to their revenue. To give some idea of the scale, the Irish Government has allocated €1.6 billion of capital spend to maintain and develop the national road network over a similar duration. As a result of Eir’s investment, two out of every three fixed broadband connections in the country use the Eir network and our overall fibre broadband roll-out has now passed 75% of all Irish homes and businesses. The Eir mobile network currently delivers 4G mobile coverage to 96% of the population in Ireland and is nationwide, serving all counties in Ireland.

In April 2017 Eir entered into an agreement with the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment to pass over 300,000 specific premises with high-speed fibre broadband, mostly fibre to the home technology, supporting broadband speeds up to 1 Gbps or 1,000 Mbps. During the national broadband plan, NBP, procurement process, the Department had written to all operators asking for any plans to roll out high-speed broadband in rural Ireland in order that it could adjust the NBP intervention area accordingly. This is in line with the rules covering state aid. The Department received roll-out plans from a number of companies but Eir was the only one which committed, by agreement with the Department, to deliver additional investment and Eir has actually delivered on that. I am pleased to inform the committee that Eir will deliver even more than that to which it committed in 2017 and will pass an additional 30,000 homes and businesses in rural Ireland, bringing the total premises to 330,000 and the total private capital investment up to €250 million. At the end of August, 180,000 or 60% of the 300,000 premises from the original agreement were passed.

An additional 21,000 premises have also now been passed. This takes the number of properties that can be connected to high-speed broadband specifically in rural areas to over 200,000. When the programme is fully complete in the middle of next year we will see 300 business parks, over 1,000 schools, over 28,000 farms and over 47,000 small businesses passed with high-speed future-proofed fibre technology.

The properties and areas included in the original investment were notified to the Department before the programme commenced and properties that were not deemed to be in an area that could be served on a commercial basis were subsequently included in the State intervention area to be served by the national broadband plan.

Eir's fibre investment, which is unmatched in scale and scope in the market, is opening up new opportunities for citizens and rural communities across the country. It is clear Eir's investment is making a difference for Ireland. Recent data from the European Court of Auditors showed that the availability of high-speed broadband in Ireland has increased from just over 30% of the population in 2011 to more than 90% in 2017, an improvement bested only by Italy in Europe and delivered almost entirely due to Eir's fibre investment. The European Commission's Digital Economy and Society Index 2018 ranks Ireland sixth in Europe, up three places from 2017. In fact, Ireland belongs to the higher performing cluster of countries. I am extremely proud of the dedication of all our staff, whose efforts have transformed the lives of the 635,000 families and businesses that now have high-speed fibre broadband.

All that being said, I understand the public's concern, and members' concerns, that the delivery of broadband in Ireland will not be solved until every person who needs a high-speed connection can get one. I have travelled around the country and heard directly from those who are waiting for broadband. Eir also processes on average 50 representations a week from Deputies, Senators, councillors and broadband officers in local authorities and three quarters of those queries we receive relate to those looking for high-speed broadband. I am acutely aware of the demands that are out there.

I will talk about the importance of the national broadband plan in a moment. However, members should recognise that as an open economy, and with the threat of Brexit looming over us, we need private sector investment to continue to keep Ireland competitive. That is why Eir's shareholders have a strong appetite to invest in our network. Our ambition is to be the best broadband and mobile provider in Ireland and our €1 billion capital investment plan over the next five years, we believe, will be the largest privately funded investment programme in Ireland over the period. This will bring fibre-to-the-home technology to 1.4 million homes outside of the national broadband plan State intervention area and the programme will employ 1,000 people during deployment.

I am sure that members have heard stories from their constituents and friends and examples where Eir's customer service has not been up to scratch. I have heard those stories too and I take them very seriously. I read every complaint that is sent in to me and I am determined to change fundamentally the way we interact with our customers.

Members will have seen the decision we took last week to change our customer care model from outsourced services provided by HCL to insourcing this work to Eir employees. By investing in new IT systems and by bringing customer care back in-house - with good customer contact jobs - to a new centre in Sligo as well as in Limerick and Cork, we hope to dramatically improve our customer service.

These investment programmes, in infrastructure, IT and staff, will improve significantly the lives and connectivity of the people of Ireland. It will mean more opportunities for remote working, for ehealth, for online education and for home entertainment, as well as offering increased opportunities for small businesses.

Ireland has among the most dispersed of populations and has the highest proportions of rural dwellers in Europe. Some 42% of Irish people live in rural areas compared with an EU average of 27%. This reality, coupled with the geography of our environment, poses an enormous challenge to Eir in making the business case for further fibre network investment in more remote areas where costs would be prohibitive. Eir recognises the need, therefore, for the national broadband plan, NBP.

In January this year, Eir took the difficult decision to withdraw from the bidding process for the national broadband plan. Eir had invested over €7 million in the bid and on a personal level, I can assure the committee arriving at that position was very disappointing. However, as a commercial organisation, we could no longer proceed.

Despite leaving the bidding process, Eir continues to be highly engaged in the process as a provider of pole-and-duct infrastructure access to the remaining bidder and has spent significant time and resources to help the Enet consortium. At every juncture, Eir has been an active participant and supporter of successive Governments' plans to promote broadband availability across Ireland. Eir will continue to support Government initiatives where it can and Eir is working closely with Enet to support its NBP bid.

We have made substantial progress in recent years, delivering high-speed broadband to 75% of the homes and businesses in Ireland from a standing start in 2012 and investing €1.5 billion in our network over the past five years, but the transformation of Eir is not complete. We need to continually improve the experience we deliver to our customers and continue to transform Ireland into a global leader in high-speed communications technology. Our objective is to provide the best mobile and broadband network in the country and we are embarking on a €1 billion nationwide investment programme over the next five years to make that a reality.

I thank the members for their attention. We look forward to taking their questions.