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

First, I understand the frustration to which the Deputy refers. There are thousands of my own constituents who are in the exact same situation, whereby they are struggling with little or no coverage. Some of them are also quite close to fibre that has been already built out or that is planned to be built out. eir has decided to look at its build out plan to see if there are commercial premises, schools or clusters of housing to which its network could be easily extended. The company is actively looking at that at the moment but that is a commercial decision for eir. Aside from that, the national broadband plan will bridge the gap and ensure that every single premises in the country will have access to high speed broadband. More than 90% of premises will have that access by 2020. We are also looking at how we can sweat the existing asset, the fibre that has been built out and the infrastructure that is already in place. That is why the auctioning off of the 3.6 gigahertz spectrum was so important because it allows for both mobile and wireless operators to provide broadband data services to a much broader catchment more quickly. In the coming months we will see some of those companies beginning to trial and offer services to customers who do not have access to such services at present.

See this speech in context