Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, for taking this Topical Issue matter. On some level she got the cards no one would want. It is straightforward like that.

I accept that the Minister is busy. However, I believe this is a particular issue and I have said to an official in the Minister's office that I expect the Minister to come back to me on this matter.

There are several issues we need dealt with at Government level. We all welcome the initial roll-out of the national broadband plan. We see it in the light of rural electrification by the ESB and the Minister has spoken of it as such.

The remote working scheme has been talked up by the Tánaiste. He also said that supports are available and an attempt by Government has been made to look at every means from the point of view of accelerating this process. That is absolutely necessary. However, I believe we might need an operational point person for when there are issues relating to National Broadband Ireland that need to be dealt with, whether at Civil Service, local authority, cross-departmental or governmental level.

I had a meeting with representatives of National Broadband Ireland earlier in the week. In fairness, the chief executive officer and the deployment officer, among several others, were at it and I thank them for that. It is straightforward. I do not need to go through the ins and outs. I was given an update in respect of Louth. I could talk about areas of Louth that do not have deployment. I could talk about the difficulties that people have with remote working and home tutoring of children who are unable to be at school at this point. However, I will leave that all behind.

We know this is a plan to be rolled out to 544,000 premises. That number has increased. More people now live in the intervention areas. It was deemed that other areas needed to be included in the intervention area because their broadband connectivity was not good enough.

I will shift through to several of the problems. National Broadband Ireland, like everyone else, was impacted by Covid-19. The organisation is slightly behind but those responsible still intend to keep as close as possible to the timelines.

One issue needs to be brought up. Obviously, when NBI is operating in deployment areas tree trimming is an issue. I know it is an issue for the Irish Farmers Association and others. This could be a problem for the roll-out. We need a moratorium, or perhaps under the Act there is a means for a major infrastructure project like this to be accommodated. It needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible.

Section 254 guidelines are being rolled out in respect of poles and planning. I have been told by National Broadband Ireland that this is good. Those involved expect this to be rolled out across all local authorities. Sometimes the problem is the means by which they look for permits. They will try to deal with everything. If NBI needs to put in 50 poles, maybe 30 fit the guidelines and then the operators have to deal with the others. Problems occur during operations. One of the difficulties is the fact that they have to put in fresh planning. If that planning is with Transport Infrastructure Ireland, it could take four to eight weeks. If it is with the local authority, it could be anywhere from two days to eight weeks. That is not good enough and it is holding them up.

There is also a problem with skillsets. We need to talk with the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris. There is talk of taking in teams from abroad. There are difficulties around ensuring that safe passes can be sped up. I will deal with the other matters presently.

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