Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

A constituent of mine in Carlow cannot access an NBI connection because the website says the survey is still pending. NBI contractors have been on the ground throughout the country for more than 22 months and more than 291,000 premises nationwide have been surveyed. A total of 3,500 premises were surveyed in September last year. When my constituent checks on the NBI website and enters his Eircode postcode to see what stage it is at, his status is stuck. It is stuck on "survey pending" and that has been going on for the past year. When he rings me, he tells me he is always told the same, namely, that it is stuck on pending and it has been like that for the past year. This means he cannot contact service providers of broadband to arrange a date to connect his house to be ready to receive the router from the service provider.

At the same time, the status of his next-door neighbour, 100 m down the road on the same fibre line, is described on the NBI website as being ready to connect service providers. I hear this all the time, whereby neighbours have been left short compared with other neighbours. That is the biggest issue. I have been contacted by people who say there could be two houses on a road that have a connection, five that do not and then a further ten that do. It just does not make sense.

One thousand homes in Ireland were connected in December. A total of 29% and 38% of all premises in counties Carlow and Kilkenny, respectively, are within the intervention area but there remain broadband-poor areas, which we have to address. That is the issue that is coming across my desk all the time.

Under Our Rural Future, we gave a commitment to developing a national network of 400 remote working hubs over the next five years. There is nationwide coverage, with more than 177 hubs already using the connect hub platform, but the other 223 are not up and running. These hubs are great but there are constituents of mine who live outside of easy commuting distance to them and they need broadband. It is these people who are losing out. We all want the national broadband plan to move as quickly as possible because broadband plays a significant part in people's lives and work, in businesses and so on.

These issues have to be addressed. How can two houses on a road not have broadband and yet five houses beside them have it? It just does not make sense. Will the Minister of State look into that for me? It is important we move on this. Broadband is so important to everyone and Covid has shown us its importance for working from home and for businesses.

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