Results 8,901-8,920 of 20,094 for speaker:Brian Stanley

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: That has not yet been used.

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: I know that. That had to do with reset targets that were missed. Eight and a half months were allowed to NBI due to Covid delays. It came in at the start of this year at 30% of where it should have been in January 2022, but it was allowed eight and a half months. I do not recall telecommunications being closed down for eight and a half months.

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: If my recall is correct, telecommunications was closed down for three to four months.

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: Does the sanction relate specifically to those periods of disruption caused by Covid?

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: Are any sanctions pending from April 2021 onwards with regard to the roll-out?

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: I have a question about Eir. It owns much of the ducting and poles. The original intervention area included 750,000 premises. The Minister and Government decided to pick about 220,000, as I recall.

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: Sorry, 300,000. I would call them lower-hanging fruit. I can identify blue areas on the map where the roll-out happened. That presents a significant difficulty. It mainly picked up the fringes of towns and villages and heavily-populated clusters of ribbon development on the outskirts of towns, maybe a mile up the road. Through this scheme, the taxpayer was going to have to pay for that...

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: That was there commercially.

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: Let me just make this point.

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: That was done commercially. Why were those areas ever included in a broadband plan to be funded by the taxpayer when they could be serviced commercially? It is obvious from looking at the maps. The easiest way to do it is to look at an area one is familiar with. One can then identify exactly where a commercial operator could have done it. In Clonkeen in Portlaoise, for example, there...

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: Why were they ever included in an intervention area to receive subvention from the taxpayer when they could have been picked up by a commercial operator in the first place?

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: Were they sitting back, waiting for the State to intervene and the taxpayer to cough up the cash?

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: Mr. Mulligan knows my concerns about the make-up of NBI, the structure of its board and so on. We cannot undo that now. I have articulated some of that again today. It has been allowed to retrospectively reduce the original target from 8,000 to zero passed in January 2021. It missed its original targets, reaching half, at best, by the end of this year. It has negotiated remedial targets,...

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: Is Mr. Mulligan concerned by the five facts I have just outlined?

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: I welcome the fact that there are some sanctions, however small. I take the point that it is only paid for what is rolled out. I said last year that a Minister told me in the Convention Centre Dublin that there were no sanctions.

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: With regard to the contingency fund of €500 million in the context of the broadband plans, has any of that been paid out or used to date?

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: How much has been applied for?

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: Is it less than €10 million?

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: I know that from the briefing note provided by the Department. I can see where that is in relation to excess profit, the sale of NBI, network deployment, etc. There is an ask for some of the fund at the moment and there is a potential draw on it. On the encroachment fund, there is €130 million in that fund. My understanding of the fund is that there is the intervention area but...

Public Accounts Committee: 2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General - Chapter 9: Implementation of the National Broadband Plan (13 Oct 2022)

Brian Stanley: Is Mr. Mulligan confirming that no money, not even an amount in the thousands, has been paid out?