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. T.J. Malone:

We see that happening in 2022. This year has been all about coping with where we are and getting ourselves into a good position to get into 2022. "e envisage getting consistency, fluidity and programme delivery on the ground, and up and running, in 2022. We see 2022 as the year for us. There are obstacles, problems and issues out there. In any project of this scale, one will experience unknowns throughout. We believe we have come across the vast majority of them in the first year. We have come across a number of issues, found solutions and dealt with them. No doubt, we will find others as we go through it. In the first 12 or 18 months of any project of this scale, the big issues are reached fairly early in the project and solutions are found to work around them. We touched on some of them earlier, including the local authorities, the section 254 issues and the make-ready works. We have worked through all of those to put ourselves in a position so that we are confident when we hit 2022 we will start to get into a steady pace. We call it industrialised. That is where we get into an industrialised state whereby, from that point, we can then start to have a platform to move on to meeting and exceeding the targets.