Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 10 February 2022

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
National Broadband Plan Expenditure and Related Matters

9:30 am

Mr. T.J. Malone:

There is a combination of two kinds of poles. First, there are the poles we are utilising that Eir already has in place. It has approximately 1.466 million poles out there on its database that we are coming across. We would intend to utilise most, if not all, of those poles. Where there are gaps in the network, we will add additional poles. We originally thought that there would be a 10% requirement for new poles, approximately. As we are getting on the ground now and out there surveying, we do not think we will need as many new poles as initially envisaged. It is too early to say exactly what the number will be. Originally, we would have thought it would be a little over 100,000, but what we are seeing is a bit less than that.