Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Eir is a private company, as the Deputies should know, given its privatisation in Fianna Fáil's time when the infrastructure was sold off. The Government signed a commitment contract with Eir to connect 300,000 houses which the company identified. The houses the Deputies talked about which are at the ends of roads will be part of the intervention area under the national broadband plan. The final tender has been received and is being evaluated by the Department and it is expected that a contract will be signed before the end of the year with an expectation that, from 2019 onwards, these houses will be connected. I cannot provide the Deputies with a timeline for each house, but it is expected that from 2019 on, every house will know when exactly it will be connected.

As to who will decide where in the intervention area the houses to which the Deputies refer will be connected or where they will start, it would make perfect sense to me, and possibly to the Deputies, that where Eir goes halfway up a road connecting houses, this would continue as part of the intervention area under the contract. This is not for me to decide; the tender must be evaluated. I understand Eir will look at the best technical and engineering solution to the roll-out. The most important thing is that we have a geographic spread, all areas are covered and there is a timeline such that there is certainty for those households not currently connected. From my understanding, my Department is neither involved in nor aware of any process for the inclusion of premises in Eir's deployment on a case-by-case basis. Eir is entitled to deploy outside the areas planned under the 300,000 deployment, as any operator would be, but it publicly and very strongly indicated it is not in a position to do so on request. It states that it can make decisions on a commercial basis, but the Government has signed off on, and Eir has given a commitment to, the 300,000, so Eir must ensure that those 300,000 houses are complete. What Eir does after that on a commercial basis is up to the company, but those houses that are not covered on a commercial basis will be covered under the national broadband plan intervention area.

See this speech in context