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

I cannot give the Deputy a date on when the contract will be signed because this decision was only taken last Tuesday week and was only notified to me at that stage. We have not had the opportunity to consider the implications relating to the procurement process. I have given the Deputy the timelines we were looking at prior to that. I have also said that, based on the information available to me, it is likely that we will get shovels in the ground quicker. The reason for that is that once we have a preferred bidder, that preferred bidder could then engage with the banks and the contractors which could build the network across the country. The SSE-Enet consortium can now start that process. Representatives from the European Investment Bank were with me last month. They are very anxious to invest in this process. They have been engaging with SSE-Enet and Eir on that. They can now directly engage with SSE-Enet. It allows them to truncate that entire process and get shovels in the ground. At this stage, however, I honestly cannot give the Deputy a date on that because we have to assess the full implications of it. We cannot be definitive in that regard until we sign that contract. At that stage, as I did with the Eir commitment agreement where we published as much of that documentation as we could and gave clear timelines in that regard every quarter, it would be my intention to do the exact same with this process to ensure that people clearly know when they will get broadband and the targets for that.

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