Results 3,761-3,780 of 6,541 for speaker:Ruairí Ó Murchú

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: Could he put up a map, please?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: There are a couple of those gap intervention areas the Chairman would like to point out.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: I welcome Mr. Hendrick, Mr. Malone and the rest of the team. It does look like we are in a slightly better place than before, which is welcome. I reiterate the point made by everyone that everybody wants to get this service tomorrow. Obviously, it can make a significant difference in people's lives, which was shown throughout the pandemic. We are looking at a figure of 102,000 by the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: In fairness, the Chairman tried.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: The difficulty is we had a figure of 60,000 premises passed for the end of January and the end of March, but for multiple reasons we did not reach it. It is vital we stay ahead of this. I am going to bring this back to where the conversation started initially. For all of us it was probably from the point of view of acceleration. I just want it on the record again that originally we had...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: The self-install product was going to be my next question. In fairness, clarification has been given a number of times that it is not actually a product. It is just the ability for the NBI to put in the ducting. It is either that or it is the piece of work Eir does itself to make it ready to increase capacity. There is no promise from Eir with regard to increasing that. If this is the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: Roughly.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: I accept that it is not specifically about National Broadband Ireland, but from Eir's point of view it is about the integrity of its infrastructure, so it maintains control of it and nobody else has a means of doing what the NBI is looking to do. Is that not the whole idea of it?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: We need that done as soon as possible. There has to be a big emphasis in particular on the Minister and the Department to play whatever part they can to ensure, following the court proceedings, which we hope are positive in the context of facilitating this move, we can actually deliver upon an acceleration. The figure we get fixated on is premises passed, which is 63,652 according to this...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: Those extra 10,000 get factored into that over the next month or so.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: That is grand and it is worth knowing. It is probably worth maintaining this in the NBI figures from now on from the point of view of the significant amount of the work actually done at that stage. Are we getting to the end of areas that are not in the intervention area being able to move into the intervention area?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: The Department had said that the time was coming to an end. Is that correct?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: To move those areas would be seen as having a detrimental impact on their business.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: I hope the Department would maintain communication with them to ensure the commitment is maintained so people do not get left out. We had previously spoken about these areas and it was specific to Eir. I am aware the NBI disputed the figure of 40,000 premises where there was crossover of Eir and the NBI doing the same piece of work. We spoke earlier about this and the NBI mentioned we...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: I get it. Even if NBI believes that if someone else is catering for an area, it still has to build or do something else. I think the media was coming at it from the perspective that NBI could have ended up getting payment for places that it was not going to build but that will not be the case, will it?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: There was considerable comment on the financial breakdown of NBI and the money behind it. Mr. Hendrick was here before and told us it was looking for new investors. What stage has that reached? Not that many of us have looked at many companies and their investors but it did strike me that they did not appear to be the kinds of companies that were in for the long haul or, in the case of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: So NBI is in conversations or negotiations at this time. Maybe Mr. Hendrick cannot go into too much detail.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport: National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland (29 Jun 2022)

Ruairí Ó Murchú: I imagine the reason for the court case is that Eir does not really want to deliver this to the NBI.