Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is right. Everything has changed following the pandemic. Householders are rightly seeking information.

In Dublin Fingal some 6,050 premises are due to be provided with broadband under the NBP scheme. In the current plans the blue area where commercial operators are delivering or have plans to deliver, it is almost ten times that number at 57,000. That is subject to change. I expect other operators, some of which I mentioned earlier, to respond to what they see as an increase in demand. Even the networks were under serious pressure during the pandemic because the volume of data we were all using went through the roof. Our networks held up for the most part but the current system is probably at maximum capacity. As well as the NBP, we will need significant private sector investment to respond to that demand. I hope to get clarity and certainty on that, working with those operators to ensure they roll out and demonstrate to their customers where they are rolling out new networks because there is demand there.

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