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

First, the minute of the meeting in New York has been published, as has the cover note from the official who took the minute. It reads:

Please find attached the minute of last week's meeting in New York. For context the discussion on the NBP was limited to approximately ten minutes during which time Mr. McCourt addressed his remarks to me as the official representing the Department.

They were not to me as Minister, but to the official.

Who sought that meeting? Mr. McCourt sought that meeting. Did I have lunch on 18 April? No, I did not have lunch on 18 April.

I honestly do not know about the ownership of enet. Yes, the State has a significant share in that company.

Deputy Stanley is correct. What the national broadband plan is about is stringing fibre cable on the Eir network of 1 million telephone poles across this country. They are in private ownership and we can go back over how they ended up in private ownership but the reality is that are in private ownership. The reality is that before my appointment as Minister we had a situation where we had the greatest economic boom in this country. There was no investment by the incumbent. We had a mobile spectrum that was auctioned off to the highest bidder. Consumers had to pay for that and it minimised the coverage. The national broadband plan scheme that was launched was obsolete the day it went live.

At the start of this complex process in 2015, the target was to bring 30 megabits per second broadband speeds to every single home in the country. We now know today that is obsolete and that most of the commercial operators are delivering an average of 100 megabits per second. In fact the national broadband plan, when it is hopefully approved in the coming weeks, will deliver 150 megabits per second. That is the objective in relation to it. That evaluation is ongoing currently and it would not be right for me to meet with anyone while that evaluation is ongoing. Let us see what comes out of it. We will have this within the next couple of weeks. It would not make sense at this stage to sit down with the ESB and enet and start all of this process again. We are within weeks now of finalising a long, complex process and the reality is that people have been hugely frustrated. Deputies Stanley, Dooley, Pringle, the Minister of State, Deputy Kyne, and myself are all meeting people who are hugely frustrated. They just want broadband, full stop.

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