Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have given the Deputy figures for the end of December and they are projections. I do not have figures for the end of January but I will come back to the Deputy with those tomorrow. I am happy to do that.

ComReg's quarterly report details what is going on in the broadband market and it is completely independent of the Government. It reports that 120,000 Irish households were connected to fibre in the past 12 months, which is a 50% increase on where we were a year ago, which itself was a 50% increase on where we were two years ago. We are in the position where Virgin has announced that 900,000 of its customers are being upgraded over three years to fibre and Eir has announced it is substantially upgrading all its customers to fibre. SIRO has passed 400,000 homes and is planning to pass another 350,000 homes. We are probably looking at €5 billion in fibre investment and there is a major desire and demand from the Irish public to be connected to fibre. We are seventh in Europe for broadband connections and we are doing incredibly well. We are a technological centre of Europe and the numbers of our broadband and fibre connections are accelerating because of that desire. I will do everything I can to ensure the Government subsidies provides that fibre connection to people in rural Ireland on the dates they are supposed to be.

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