Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Dooley has raised a number of questions. With regard to the speeds, to the best of my knowledge there is no commercial operator offering 1,000 Mbps at the moment. What I am telling the Deputy here and now is that, under the national broadband plan, the rural areas throughout this country will potentially be able to get up to 1,000 Mbps because the contractors are telling me they will predominantly provide fibre to the home. We will see a turnaround in regard to speeds in that people in the most isolated rural communities will have significantly higher broadband speeds than those available in many parts of this city and other urban areas across the country.

The number in the intervention area at present is 757,000 premises. We said last June there are potentially another 170,000 homes in the blue area, to which the company said it would have brought high-speed broadband by 31 December. We now know that is not the case and we are going through that. This is why, when I met Members of the Oireachtas in the AV room in Leinster House last June, I actively encouraged them to ask the public to go onto our website at www.broadband.gov.ieto see if they are in the blue area, and, if they are not getting or are not promised those speeds by the end of the year, they should let us know.

See this speech in context