Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

It is not straightforward; there are peaks and troughs. The first main exercise that happens in any deployment area is design activity, which is handed to Eir who would upgrade all the poles and ducts. Eir would pick an area, be it in Donegal or Cork, large or small, and have crews all over the country. Depending on the number of poles or ducts that need to be remediated, they are handed over to National Broadband Ireland, NBI. That figure could be 5,000 in one week and 2,000 in the next week, and so on and so forth. There are peaks and troughs based on the project management function.

On average, 7,000 to 10,000 premises are being done a month. The figure could be 12,000 one month and 6,000 the next month. We review that internally in the Department with our build team when we review those plans. They are all based on concrete plans. It is not that staff were on holidays in July and August. It was a matter of the way the project was managed in terms of the build. It is a normal exercise in the building programme.