Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the Chamber and for facilitating this question and answer session. I wish to raise two items, one in regard to the deployment areas and the second in regard to delivery of service. There is a situation just outside Castlebar where some premises are in a precarious position, with some townlands ready to go live, whereas, just across the road, there are house owners who have been informed it will be 2025 or 2026 before they get connected. My understanding is that the roll-out would be very much based on a hub and spoke model, with the roll-out progressing outwards from the urban areas. In this case, it certainly does not feel like a hub and spoke model.

In Breaffy, which is on the outskirts of Castlebar, there are 77 premises ready for pre-order and another 27 premises which have surveys pending, along with another segment of 118 premises. It appears there are three separate deployment areas in the one townland and all moving at different paces. One can imagine the frustration when people talk to their neighbours in regard to who is connected and who is not. It is similar in other villages and townlands. In Manulla, for example, there are 257 premises where it seems nothing will happen any time soon and surveys are still pending.

I would like to get the Minister of State's understanding on this issue because we constantly hear the beat of the drum about the NBI website in terms of people entering their Eircode and looking for more information. It infuriates people when they cannot even get access to the website. I ask that we address the issue around the deployment areas, which is an important one.

Second, on the delivery element, there is the issue of annoyance for people around the pace and the resistance of NBI to either provide information or even to engage with public representatives. I put in a request to NBI on 7 December in regard to County Mayo and it was 27 January before I got a response, even excluding the two weeks at Christmas. However, I did get the information eventually and I want to put that on the record of the House.

The information related to the 37,758 premises covered under the contract. It is a significant amount of work and it is the third-largest customer base for NBI after Cork and Galway. Of that, 3,348 are currently available for pre-order, which is roughly 9% of the plan. They are located on the outskirts of Ballina and Castlebar, with 1,464 for Ballina and 1,884 for Castlebar. In Mayo, there are 696 with the network built or in progress, which is 1.8% overall. There are 3,726 premises that have their engineering surveys under way, which is 10.1% of the planned intervention. Over 6,442 premises have their engineering survey planned, which is 17% of the planned interventions. Although I am running out of speaking time, I want to put this information on the record of the House. That leaves over 22,564 premises out of the 36,758 with the engineering survey pending.

How will efforts be significantly ramped up to get a large proportion of premises surveyed? What are the Department and NBI doing to get more people on the ground to implement the ramp-up strategy?

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