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

It is a seven-year project. It started in 2020 and it will end at the end of 2026. That is the seven years. If you are in year six or seven, you are probably not happy and you would prefer to be in earlier years. There was a move towards acceleration at the start, then the project went slow during the pandemic and for various reasons it then began to accelerate. We are now passing our targets. We are now at the rate where by the end of 2026 everybody will be passed. We are back on the original target. The speed of deployment accelerated greatly. I would say that by the end of next year, half of all homes in the intervention area, in other words, half the homes in rural Ireland, will have access to gigabit broadband, which is unbelievable. This is purely through the NBI service.

Meanwhile, 150,000 homes in Ireland per year are connecting to fibre. I do not mean being passed; I mean getting connections. Of those, 30,000 or 20% are from NBI. In other words, they are in the non-commercial intervention area.

I went to NBI’s board meeting recently. I meet with all the commercial operators and will be meeting with Virgin very soon. We are continuing to have conversations about how we can accelerate further and have the deployment done in less than seven years. Shortly I will go to the mobile phone and broadband task force meeting in Athlone to meet with public and private providers.

See this speech in context