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

Once again, I would like to bring up the issue of the acceleration of the national broadband plan. I welcome the Government commitment in relation to this. I had a meeting with National Broadband Ireland, NBI. It dealt with a number of issues that it said were probably hampering the acceleration. One of the issues relates to Safe Pass. In fairness, I dealt with this on Thursday last here. It looks like that issue has been dealt with. That was impacting on contractors coming in.

There is a different formation of planning permission permits that the company is looking for. At times, the company will have a plan, there be a change of a pole and then suddenly the company has to put in fresh application that could hold it up, whether by Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII, or the local authority, anywhere between two days and eight weeks. That is something we need sorted. It possibly needs a moratorium on the tree-trimming ban.

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