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:

That is correct, Chair. We appreciate the committee's support today and to date. We will follow up with further details on what we are doing with the RMO and the local authorities, and how we think we could seek further assistance. We appreciate that. Let us consider what other activities we could come back to the committee with, in terms of support. From a communications and stakeholder engagement perspective, we have seen great support. That local community and communications plan is something we are very committed to. Every week our team engages on the ground with politicians and local councillors, and it is very important that we continue that. Given its scale and complexity, it is a hard project to explain. Certainly, getting to premises earlier is our focus. In terms of the intervention areas and the programme of activities, we will feed back into the committee on our progress. Equally, in terms of how we see the deployment of the network releasing capacity to other operators and how that benefits both the end-users' businesses and homeowners, that is actually making the overall intervention area deliver a service, even though we are not there yet. We are an enabler to improving the existing broadband networks-----