Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Broadband absolutely is one of the biggest issues on which I am contacted and it is all about delivery and timings. The Minister of State heard today that people do not care about the background. They just want their broadband. It is incredibly frustrating when they were given a timeline.

Here is an example from rural Dublin. We tend to forget that there are also rural areas of Dublin that do not have broadband. It is actually more difficult to secure funding for things like hubs in rural Dublin than it would be in other areas. There are 13,429 premises in Dublin in the intervention area. One of them is the Westmanstown-Strawberry Beds-Porterstown area of Dublin 15. When we contacted NBI in March 2021, it said the connection date was April 2022 to June 2022. In July when I proactively followed up, concerned about timelines, I was assured it was the same timings. Then, in September 2021, we found out that it was going to be delayed until between March 2023 and May 2023.

I hear the Minister of State about the 5,400 premises that have been connected and how 1,300 of those were in December 2021 alone. Can this be sped up? Can our roll-out of broadband be increased to come back from those timelines? That is one year in which people made plans expecting that it was coming shortly. They made decisions about working from home, invested in offices at home to make this long term and then found out that it has been pushed back by a year. I hear what the Minister of State is saying about mobilising contractors and difficulties with key personnel. He has heard it here today, however. This is one of the top issues about which I get contacted. We need to put everything we can into delivery and not delay.