Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will share time with Senator Paddy Burke. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, today and thank him for his very detailed update. It was extremely detailed in terms of going through the thousands of different homes that will be connected. It is crucial because for the likes of County Roscommon, for example, which Senator Eugene Murphy will also know, we are talking about 19,000 to 20,000 homes. That is almost 50% of homes in the intervention area. We are talking about 50% of homes in a county.

The roll-out has to be accelerated. Can the Minister of State speak a little bit about how NBI is going to be putting extra supports in place to help roll this out? I acknowledge that he has mentioned local authorities but for many of our local authorities such as Galway County Council, which is the second-lowest funded council in the country, support needs to be given to the councils to allow them to rapidly review and deliver the permits required for them to engage in different areas.

I very much welcome the broadband connection points, particularly when we are looking at remote working. We have some in planning for Mountbellew, Galway's Living Bog and telehealth centre near the mart in Mountbellew. We also have some connected in Kiltoon and Cam in County Roscommon, and Glenamaddy Enterprise and Training Hub and Clonberne Enterprise Centre in County Galway. It is really important that we are seeing these happen. The first premises in County Galway to be connected was in Ballinasloe, which was a priority area. Ballinasloe was seen as a priority within the county. I know this was allocated to a number of regions so we are very grateful to see that work is happening.

I also acknowledge the partnerships that NBI is running to support and promote the roll-out and to encourage people to engage with digitalisation, particularly in our farming networks. We have seen people go online for marts all through last year and the year before. It is wonderful to see it. I see this partnership now with Macra na Feirme, working with students on the business and technology award as part of an annual agricultural challenges day where they are all going to be putting in entries on the technologies they want to deploy on their farms and why. Those are the people who are leading, for God's sake. They are the ones with all the apps that have come out. They are all Irish innovators in farming and agriculture and we are helping to support them do that through NBI through the roll-out of the national broadband plan.