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

Yes, Ireland is unique in European terms in respect of its dispersed population in that 38% of our population lives on 96% of the landmass of the country. A total of 27% of the population lives in villages of fewer than 50 homes whereas the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, average is 11%. Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the Internet who was here at the Dublin Data Summit on 16 June, said, "[Y]ou are working one of the hardest problems we know about. Highly distributed, highly rural, low density population ... So your success in this will be a real beacon for other populations that have this similar sort of rural population". International experts are looking to Ireland because what we are doing has not been done anywhere else in the world and under the national broadband plan, and through its commercial stimulus aspect, 10% of the premises that have been passed by the Eir contract to date, which is approximately 100,000 properties, have connected to pure fibre and I am told approximately 20% of those 100,000 have connected with the SIRO roll-out. Between 10% and 20% is the rate of connection to pure fibre on foot of the commercial stimulus aspect of the national broadband plan.

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