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

The national broadband plan represents a significant capital investment project for the State and aims to deliver high speed services to every city, town, village and individual premises in Ireland. The Programme for Partnership Government commits to the delivery of the national broadband plan as a matter of priority. The Government’s intervention strategy is available on my Department's websiteand sets out detailed service specifications, including a requirement that the State-funded network must be capable of delivering high quality, high speed broadband.

My Department is now in a formal procurement process to select a company or companies which will roll out the new high speed broadband network to more than 750,000 premises in Ireland, covering 100,000 km of road network and 96% of the land mass of Ireland. Intensive dialogue with bidders is continuing, and the three remaining bidders have indicated they propose a predominantly fibre to the home solution.

The procurement process is now well under way, with in excess of 250 hours of dialogue completed with the three bidders and more than 2,000 pages of contract documentation exchanged. This process aims to tease out all of the detailed proposals with a view to ensuring that the final contract or contracts are fit for purpose and fully deliver on the Government's high level objective of a truly open access, wholesale network that delivers quality affordable services to all premises in the intervention area, regardless of how remote these premises are and meets their needs for in excess of 25 years.

After the initial dialogue is concluded, the bidders will be asked to submit draft proposals for consideration and further dialogue. When this process is complete a formal tender will issue.

I assure the Deputy that the procurement process is being intensively managed by my Department to ensure an outcome that delivers a future-proofed network that serves homes and businesses across Ireland for at least 25 years. My Department's national broadband plan team is supported by external consultants providing additional support in the area of procurement, as well as legal, financial and technical expertise. It would not be appropriate for me to comment further publicly on the evaluation process at this time.

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