Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 15 September 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

Business of Joint Committee
Update on National Broadband Plan: National Broadband Ireland

Mr. Peter Hendrick:

Right now we are focused, with the Department, in terms of contractualising for 2022 on the basis of what we call the "known knowns" of our contracts with our subcontractors and also with Eir. In parallel we are working on the increase in volume from Eir. We have that contracted now. We contracted it during the summer. That kicks off on 1 October. Then there is the procurement activity we must undertake. We are ahead on surveys, we are getting ahead on design and all that will feed into the volume we need to contract with our subcontractors. At the beginning of next year we hope to be in a position where we actually understand what the recovery looks like from 2023 and what our plan is for bringing some or all of the deployment areas forward from 2026 and obviously 2025. I am not sure it will necessarily be contracted early next year but we are working with the Department on all the enablers to ensure we get to a position where we can bring forward those deployment areas in 2025 and 2026.