Mr. Peter Hendrick:

As a management team and as a company we have over 300 people who are highly experienced in rolling out networks. We are at a point now where we can see over 150,000 premises under construction and they will quickly start to move to being premises passed and connected. We are very confident about that.

The amber area is the national broadband plan area in which we operate. The blue area is that which is currently serviced by commercial operators. Part of the challenge with the commercial operators is that they would say their infrastructure supports connectivity to this point. The definition of what is high-speed broadband today is 30 Mbps under the national broadband contract. In time, I expect that number of 30 Mbps to grow. We are trying to manage a future-proofed network and provide certainty for the future in building out our network to premises in the amber area.

There will always be premises that are close to existing infrastructure, whether that is Eir or another operator, and that fall into the national broadband plan area and cannot get connected by the commercial operator. We are seeing that all over the country. The last time I spoke before the committee I said we are looking at areas where there is existing infrastructure and where homes might be connected if the national broadband plan does not naturally go through the area. We have a tender out at the moment and we expect the first round of responses this week. We are doing an evaluation over February and March and doing trials and pilots of those technologies. We will keep the committee informed of that progress. We absolutely understand the frustration where a neighbour might have connectivity and others have to wait until 2024 or 2025. In some circumstances, even that procurement process we are looking to undertake might not solve those problems. We will keep the committee informed of the progress. We have committed to quarterly updates and as soon as I have an update I will give it. We will certainly add this to the quarterly updates on progress, even if we have not finalised the process. Mr. Malone will answer the question about local authorities.