Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 26 June 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment

National Broadband Plan: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Denis O'Leary:

It is a good question and it is something in respect of which we would have to sit down and plan carefully. Our intention is that no customer would suffer more than two day outages. We would approach it in many ways like electrification was approached in many rural locations. We would make it a kind of community event, indicating what was being done was for the community. I refer to the provision of an essential service a community does not have. We felt we would get the support of the local people but we would have to work very closely with them on issues such as that raised. We are used to dealing with people during outages, however, and we accommodate people who cannot deal with an outage. There could be a wedding, christening or Holy Communion. We try to accommodate such customers as much as we can. In general, we will try to do it as quickly as we can and minimise the outages for the customers.