Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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We will now hear statements on the roll-out of broadband. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, who has joined us and thank him for giving his time. I look forward to hearing an update on broadband.

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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As ever, it is my honour and pleasure to address the Seanad on what is, I am sure, an important matter of interest to everybody in Ireland.

I reaffirm to the House that the national broadband plan remains a top priority for the Government. I am sure the Seanad strongly supports the overarching objective of the programme to deliver a high-speed broadband fibre network to over 554,000 premises, 1.1 million people, over 100,000 farms and non-farm businesses and some 679 schools. The national broadband plan high-speed broadband map is available on the Department's website at broadband.gov.ie. The amber area represents the area to be served by the network to be deployed under the national broadband plan, NBP, State-led intervention.

The NBP contract was signed with National Broadband Ireland in November 2019 to ensure that 100% of the premises in the State have access to a reliable, high-quality, high-speed broadband service with a minimum download speed of 500 Mbps from the outset, and with higher speeds available to businesses.

This plan is the largest infrastructure project in rural Ireland since rural electrification. It spans 96% of Ireland's land mass and it will bring high-speed broadband to 69% of Ireland's total number of farms. It will deliver fast reliable broadband through laying 140,000 km of fibre cable utilising over 1.5 million poles and more than 15,000 km of underground duct networks.

I recognise how vital telecommunications services are to citizens for so many aspects of their daily lives, including remote working, studying and e-health and, more recently, staying in touch with family members during the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has caused profound socioeconomic change and has brought to the fore the central role that digital connectivity and technology can play in transforming the way we work and connect with each other. The pandemic has highlighted, now more than ever, the importance of current and future connectivity needs, not only in city centres but also across our suburbs, towns and rural communities. Ireland will be a world leader in fibre broadband roll-out by 2026.

A key principle of the NBP is to support and stimulate commercial investment. Since the publication of the NBP strategy in 2012, the commercial telecommunications sector has invested over €3.3 billion upgrading and modernising networks which support the provision of high-speed broadband and mobile telecommunications services. Extensive investment plans are in place by a range of operators in commercial areas. Eir has stated it will roll out fibre to the home to a further 1.6 million premises in urban areas, bringing its overall fibre-to-the-home deployment to approximately 1.9 million premises. Meanwhile, SIRO is currently completing the first phase of its fibre deployment. To date, it has passed more than 400,000 premises with gigabit services. It has recently announced plans to extend that network to an additional 320,000 premises. Virgin Media Ireland has also recently announced a €200 million investment to upgrade its broadband network to full fibre to the more than 1 million premises the company covers over the next three years. Many other network operators and telecommunications service providers across the State also continue to invest in their networks.

Today, more than 2.4 million or 77% of premises in Ireland can access commercially available high-speed broadband services of more than 30 Mbps. In the 2021 digital economy and society index, DESI, for the 27 EU countries, Ireland performed well. It ranked fifth with a score of 60.3, which is well above the EU average of 50.7. NBI will address the remaining premises through the national broadband plan State intervention.

As recently as six years ago, Ireland had a fibre-to-the-home, FTTH, network covering less than 1% of the 1.7 million broadband subscriptions. Latest figures from ComReg for quarter 3 of 2021 showed that FTTH subscriptions are now at 340,000 or 20% of the 1.7 million subscriptions and growing. This upward trajectory has been achieved through a combination of commercial investment and State intervention.

NBI commenced connections to the new fibre network in January 2021, just 12 months ago. As of today, over 54,000 premises are available for order and pre-order for high-speed fibre broadband across 21 counties, including Carlow, Clare, Cavan, Cork, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Limerick, Louth, Mayo, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford and Wicklow.

NBI has advised that over 154,000 premises are constructed or under construction, demonstrating that the project is reaching scale. Over 5,400 premises have been connected as of 14 January and this figure is increasing weekly. To date, the level of connections is in line with projections and in some areas it is exceeding expectations.

While substantial progress has been made to date, the Covid-19 pandemic has had an impact on the delivery of the fibre network, resulting in delays in the delivery of aspects of the programme. Impacts include challenges with the mobilisation of key contractors, restrictions on operations and supply chain, as well as logistical delays, both nationally and internationally. In addition, there have been challenges with the recruitment of key personnel as NBI and its contractors scale up, including challenges associated with on-boarding and training people. Like all of us, NBI and contractor staff are at risk of contracting Covid-19 or may have had to restrict their movements as a result of being a close contact. This impact continues to be felt due to the current more contagious Omicron variant.

With a project of the scale of the NBP, it can be difficult for media commentary to fully communicate the scale of activity or work completed in terms of delivery of the NBP. I will share with Senators some details of what has been achieved against the backdrop of challenging circumstances brought about by the pandemic to date. Some 6 million m of cable has been installed; 25,000 telegraph poles have been remediated or newly installed; 152,000 premises have been submitted to Open Eir for make-ready; 250 section 254 applications have been submitted across all 31 local authorities, with 154 approved; 38 deployment area designs have been approved by the Department; over 150,000 premises in 45 deployment areas across 26 counties are either under build or build-completed; six deployment areas are now fully build-completed, with four more deployment areas nearing completion; three island deployment areas with build are under way; 26 local exchange sites with Nokia equipment installed are ready for network connectivity; there are 54,000 premises available to order or pre-order across 21 counties, as well as three islands off the coast of Donegal; there are 34,417 premises available to order by 31 January 2022; 7,355 orders have been received by retail service providers; 5,477 connections have been completed across 11 counties, with 1,300 connections made in December 2021 alone; 453 broadband connection points have been installed; and 50 retail service providers, RSPs, have been contracted, with 34 of those on-boarded.The ongoing investment in the roll-out is also creating employment opportunities. There are 292 direct employees and 911 indirect employees working with build and design contractors. They are now employed on foot of the NBP investment, with this number rising weekly as construction activity ramps up.

Broadband connection points, BCPs, are a key element of the NBP. They are located in areas of community importance, allowing local residents to quickly get free public access to high-speed broadband in advance of fibre deployment under the national broadband plan. BCPs are a key support for promoting balanced regional development as part of a sustainable and equitable post-pandemic recovery and will enable rural communities to avail of the opportunities presented by the digital economy. BCPs have been developed to become digitally enabled community assets. Activities currently under way include: the establishment of remote working facilities at a significant number of locations; remote e-health consultation booth pilot projects; digital skills training for children and young people and; a national BCP film festival that will be screened at BCPs.

As of 14 January, some 453 BCP sites in total have been installed by NBI and 255 of the publicly available sites are now connected with high-speed broadband service through a service provider contract with Vodafone. As part of this initiative, primary school BCPs are also being provided with high-speed broadband, for educational use, through service provider contracts managed by the Department of Education. To date, 185 schools have been installed, out of the total of 453 BCP sites, with high-speed broadband for educational access and 99 schools are now connected. An acceleration of this aspect of the national broadband plan will see some 679 schools connected to high-speed broadband well ahead of the original target delivery timeframe of 2026.

The House will also be aware of recent commentary on the ownership structure of NBI and parliamentary questions answered by me on this in the Dáil in December. I can confirm that the ownership structure of NBI remains as advised to the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications at contract award in November 2019 and at the effective date of the contract on 9 January, 2020. The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has rights of consent under the project agreement in respect of changes in ownership and NBI must notify the Minister in advance of any such event arising. There have been no subsequent notifications of changes to ownership or control.

With large-scale projects of this nature, it is usual that the investors' investment in the project is structured through tiered holding companies. NBI applies the highest standards to its corporate governance and the structures adopted by it are typical of investments in critical infrastructure not only in Ireland but globally where investors of international reach and scale are involved. As the roll-out progresses, I will ensure that Senators are kept up to date. The Department will continue to arrange Oireachtas stakeholder information sessions for Deputies and Senators. I am pleased to note that some 21 sessions were facilitated in the past six months or so.

Citizens can also obtain information on specific areas in the intervention area through the NBI website. This site provides a facility for any premises within the intervention area to register their interest in being provided with deployment updates through its website, www.nbi.ie. Individuals who register with this facility will receive regular updates on progress by NBI on delivering the network and specific updates relating to their own premises as works commence.

Furthermore, NBI has a dedicated email address, reps@nbi.ie, which can be used by Oireachtas members for specific queries. NBI has recently published details of its full deployment schedule on its website which enables all premises within the intervention area to have an anticipated service activation date range.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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I apologise for interrupting the Minister of State, but I must allow other speakers to contribute because we have to finish at 3.30 p.m.

Róisín Garvey (Green Party)
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I will not need the full eight minutes. Tá an tAire Stáit ag obair go dian ar an bhfadhb seo. Is dúshlán mór é atá ann le fada an lá ach, faoi dheireadh, tá rudaí ag tarlú agus tá sé ag bogadh ar aghaidh.

I thank the Minister of State for taking on this role. I know he has been working immensely hard on it. We have had repeated meetings with NBI to see how we can get the entire process speeded up. I see we are now reaching targets beyond those originally set. I take my hat off to the Minister of State. Despite Covid and everything else, it is good to finally see proper acceleration for rural broadband. I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to everything in rural Ireland. As a point of information, Macra na Feirme conducted a rural youth survey and sent a questionnaire to young people in rural areas. Macra has more than 10,000 members. Some 53% of young people said they would stay in their local village or rural area. If there was good Internet access, they would be willing to stay and work from home or in a remote working hub. It is such an key element to ensuring that rural areas remain alive. For too long we have only seen old people and really young people in villages. There was a complete brain drain of the young people who are needed in every village and town. I remember living in Drumcolliher years ago and we started an organic horticulture course. There was a bunch of 20-somethings involved. All the old people in the village kept calling to my house saying it was great to have young people around the village. Bringing broadband to rural areas is akin to bringing colleges and jobs to those places. As we discovered during the pandemic, we can do most things from home. It is interesting that rural broadband could bring so many young people, energy, ideas and innovation to villages and towns, all of which are so badly needed.

It is great that more than 3,600 premises around Kilkishen, Sixmilebridge, Ballyhannon, Cloghlea, Bunratty, Shannon and Spancel Hill are getting fibre broadband. The BCPs are brilliant as well. They are definitely very useful while we are waiting for everybody to get rural broadband, and they will be needed after that. I worked from home for 14 years. I used to check into a digihub even though I had good Internet access at home. That was just to have people around me and so I would not have to look at the laundry. There is an important role to be played by digihubs or BCPs. It is not a case of having one or the other; we need both. It is really good to see them coming on board. In my village of Inagh, we will have a new digihub in the coming weeks. They are scattered all over Clare now. In fairness to the local authority, Clare is leading the way because it has brought it on board. There is a very successful digital hub in Ennistimon, and a brand new one in Ennis. It can make a huge difference to people to have that connection, even those who have been working from home successfully. I work out of the Ennistimon hub and I see the fantastic collaboration that is coming out of it. People are working with each other and creating new ideas within the framework provided by rural digihubs.

I want to ask the Minister of State a couple of questions. A case was put by a neighbour of mine, who got more than 120 householders to agree that they would all sign up to fibre broadband. I do not know how NBI works to prioritise where it goes, who gets fibre and when, but I am curious to hear a bit about that. If we have 70 households, for example, to buy into it, is it more attractive then for NBI to have to go to each individual house in the hope that it will link in with it? It must be worth the company's while financially as well, given that the cost is the main challenge in bringing rural broadband to individual houses that are scattered. It is much easier and cheaper to bring it into an urban area. Could we look at the idea of clusters of houses in a rural area? Even though it is not a town, we could create the equivalent of a town of 120 houses in one small parish if they would sign up to fibre broadband? Is that something that could be prioritised then to be rolled out?

In some places they have got as far as getting the infrastructure in place. The poles are up and everybody is very excited but then it is not linked or turned on. A case in point is Barefield National School, which has 370 pupils and 35 staff but most days they cannot send emails. The pole is outside the door and all the infrastructure is there but for some reason they are not connected. I do not know what that is about.

I would like an explanation of how the relationship between Eir and NBI works. Are they competing or is Eir working under NBI? I seek clarity on that because there seems to be some confusion in that regard as well.

Sharon Keogan (Independent)
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The Minister of State is very welcome. It is good to see the recent statement from NBI on the progress in surveying homes in Donegal. I hope that in the coming months people will be able to experience the stated benefits of broadband in rural areas, from mobile working, e-learning and mobile banking, to digital tourism. It is important to recognise that progress is being made.However, for a plan of this magnitude, we really must dial back and look at the rate of progress and the meeting of deadlines. That is where the questions may be. Last December we were told by NBI CEO, Peter Hendrick, that only 3,335 homes and business had been connected to high-speed Internet under the national broadband plan since its roll-out 22 months ago. That figure has been updated to 5,400 as of 14 July, according to that statement. That is another 2,065 in the last month. We are quite far off track on the original goal of delivering high-speed broadband to more than 540,000 premises over the course of the seven-year project. In fact, NBI has not even set its annual goal for 2022, having failed to the reach the self-set goals for either of the two previous years of the roll-out. All in all, it is disheartening between the costs, tendering and withdrawals. By 2022 I hope most of us realise the importance of the role of the Internet. That importance is not going to diminish. It will only grow. We need to think of broadband access in the same way we think of roads and the provision of water, light and heat. The building of a robust, modern and future-proofed national broadband network is something the State must do for the benefit of the citizen and the economy and, to some degree, the core infrastructure must remain a public asset. When it comes to providers and competition, I am all for healthy competition in the market but the infrastructure must be there first to ensure coverage and to allow for it in the first place.

I have a few suggestions on what should be done. Our broadband infrastructure must be future-proofed. By this I mean roads, footpaths, etc., should, where needed, include installed ducting that will be carrier-neutral for purposes of supplying broadband services. Providing such infrastructure may afford revenue generation to pay for the investment over time. It should also reduce the amount of work, road openings and overall cost of supplying broadband services as well as encouraging more competition. While the broadband connection points are welcome they are limited in rural areas. We need to supply and allow communities to provide for themselves with community broadband projects. This model has been successful in other countries. ComReg has not specified a specific rate of functional Internet access. ComReg decided to specify that the data rate must not be less than 28.8 kilobits per second as a minimum data rate and an associated target that 94% of the installed telephone connections must be capable so supporting a minimum data rate of kilobits per second. This is a minimum data rate in that it does not preclude Eir from offering data rates that are faster than this. This needs to be raised to at least 2 megabytes. Even that is far too low in the current year but the infrastructure is so bad in places. It should be at least 10 at this stage.

There is another issue with regard to the cost of broadband, especially for the elderly. I wish to see the cost of broadband included in the household benefits package. Currently, that package includes electricity, gas, the television licence, etc. The telephone allowance is only available to people who are living alone and are getting the fuel allowance. That is €2.50 per week. Maybe the Government could incorporate the broadband costs for the elderly. I would appreciate it if that were something it could take up in next year's budget.

This is all of vital importance. We cannot penalise rural dwellers through our failure to provide necessary IT infrastructure. It is not fair for those who do not live in major cities to be left behind by the digital revolution. I thank the Minister of State for listening to my comments.

Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail)
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Like others I welcome the Minister of State and his officials to the House for more statements on broadband, which is something that has been a common feature of this Oireachtas and the previous one. There is little doubt the pandemic has brought into sharp focus the need for high-speed broadband. The vision for it was set more than ten years ago. It has stood the test of time in that rolling out high-speed broadband to areas that would not normally be covered by the commercial sector is a policy position that has been taken by successive Governments. The Minister of State rightly identified that there has been very significant investment across the more densely-populated areas by commercial entities. They do so not for anything but to gain a return on their investment. That is healthy and how it should be and it is working well. If one is fortunate to live in one of those areas, which many people are, one benefits from reasonably good broadband access. It is not perfect because there is not fibre to the home in many cases and we need to encourage the commercial sector to continue with that. There are people who live in densely-populated areas not covered by the national broadband plan who still do not have a great Internet speed. We therefore need, through our policies and through the Department, to continue with that effort with the ultimate goal of having fibre to the home. Fibre to the cabinet is good in some areas but it is not enough.

I do not want to go back over what did or did not happen with the national broadband plan and the contract associated with it. The only comment I will make is the entire project should be seen as a doctoral thesis in how not to do something. I will leave it at that. I put plenty on the record of the relevant committee and of the other House during my time as spokesperson about this particular sector and how we got it wrong. We need to learn from it and move on. From the outset, I believed we should have done this by way of direct award. The competitive process was not the right way to go and the result has proven that. That is not to take from NBI, which is progressing the project, though not as fast as we would like. There is a steep learning curve and NBI is undergoing that at the moment. I felt from the outset we should have charged the ESB with responsibility and let it do this since it falls broadly within its field of competence. That did not happen and we are suffering and will suffer for a considerable amount of time into the future for the decisions that were taken. However, they have been taken and we must now work with NBI and its partners to try to move the project to a conclusion as quickly as possible. We can come in here and throw insults at each other but that would not serve anyone. We should work collectively to try to figure out how we make this happen more quickly.

There needs to be a greater level of co-ordination. I am aware that it was a policy position way back to try to bring together a commonality of approach at local authority level. I understand from NBI and others that there is still not uniformity with applying for licences, getting results and getting access to certain permissions and that acts as a delay. It is not the principle or primary delay but it is part of it. Some of the issues the Minister of State identified as delaying the process were foreseen by some of us and we flagged them at the time. NBI was probably gung-ho and rightly so, as that is needed. However, NBI needs to get more customer-focused. I have said that to the company as well. The only broadband-related question I get at my constituency offices and clinics is when. Some people still do not realise that it is a national contract and that it is not Eir anymore or is not SIRO or whatever company. It is now a State contract and there is company in place. They do not care about that and we get into great detail because we know how it is and how it is not. What people want to know is when. I appeal to the Minister of State to, insofar as he can, work with NBI to put in place a customer interface. It has a good one for people who are within six months of getting it. They can log on, see the area and know where it is at. However, it is different if it is going to be four or five years. Despite the fact the spin at the time was it would be done within five years, I always thought it would take seven. I suspect it will be longer given the issues and challenges that have arisen. Be that as it may, the one thing the vast majority of people want in life generally is certainty. With the level of roll-out experience NBI has at this stage, it should be in a position to give an indicative timeframe. You say to someone that they are going to be in year three. The person may try to find some kind of an interim fix using a wireless option of whatever but NBI should at least give them that certainty, insofar as it can. That is the piece missing at the minute. The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, said in the early stages of taking up office that the Government would look at trying to expedite the roll-out.Has there been any more around that? I understand National Broadband Ireland has signed up and has contractual arrangements. If there is more money required at this stage, or if there is something that the Government can do, either in policy or financial terms, that shortens that period of roll-out, then we should be looking at it. I go back to my opening comment; to some people, it would be nice to have it in the future as a lifestyle issue, for Netflix or for the kids to perhaps do a little bit of gaming or whatever. It is now as important as the phone line was at one stage and probably more important. To some extent, it was an overstatement when people say it would be as important as electricity; it now is, for most people. Whether it was kids trying to access education or doing the basic things, that is now so important. That is now a feature of life.

Even with the legislation that was published by the Government yesterday giving people a right to request the opportunity to work remotely, many people will be required to work remotely. To be sure, some companies need people in the office. However, many others are now looking at their office and property portfolios and are scaling back because they see a benefit to the employee and cost reductions from their own operational perspective. From now on, we will see people being employed on the basis that they will need to and have to work remotely. That becomes a real problem for those who live in areas with a relatively poor level of broadband.

People need certainty, and we should do anything that can be done to speed it up. We have been able to find money to resolve issues in the very recent past and we can do it here. We can work with local authorities and remove some of those impediments that are there.

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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I am sharing time equally with Senator Buttimer.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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When I think back, hindsight is a beautiful thing, when one thinks about it. I tend not to be too party political in the Seanad, but in 2017 and 2018, the Taoiseach at the time, Deputy Varadkar, championed this issue when there was a chorus of people telling him it was too much, too expensive, too ambitious, it was not going to happen and suggesting it would be better to focus and divert attention elsewhere. Due to a pandemic that has crossed the world, it has proven to be a very smart idea. I would like to put on the record that the Tánaiste, Deputy Varadkar, championed this issue from the very get-go. Now we see how important it is that we are where we are today because of something that no one foresaw.

When we consider where we are now with remote working, by having broadband in the most far-flung rural places in this country, it is putting everyone on an even keel. This country and its development of infrastructure over the past 20 to 40 years has been either large-city centric or large-provincial town centric. Finally, we are now able to put in infrastructure into rural Ireland to put it on the same level playing field, enabling people to access education, do their online banking and work from home at the same level as anybody else. It is that level of equality and ensuring there is equilibrium between urban and rural Ireland that is one of the most important things about rural broadband and why I very much welcome it.

The other point about broadband is not just necessarily about working from home, but it is with the provision and the real push towards ensuring we have remote working hubs in rural villages. What is good about that is that one is taking previously derelict or vacant buildings and repurposing them. People are coming into rural areas and villages and ten or 15 people are working away in it. That is an income as well to everyone else within that village, whether it is the shop, the butcher or wherever. When people are coming into those areas they are spending money in those localities as well, and that is a result of bringing strong broadband provision in these areas.

When the history of this time of infrastructure will be written, very strong comparisons will be shown with the electrification of rural Ireland. The Shannon scheme started in 1929 and the last rural areas electrified were in 1964. It was a 30-year process. Make no mistake about it; the infrastructural project we are embarking on here is of the absolute same colossal significance as was rural electrification. It is the exact same thing. Back then, naturally, it took over 30 years. We are hoping to do it in a much shorter timeframe.

When I look at my own part of the world with NBI in County Louth, and Senator Dooley mentioned it as well, I have to compliment NBI on its ability to communicate. It is a very good communicator. One can log on online and, down to the very townland, to a couple of fields or to a small townland, one can see roughly when that is due to be connected. That provides people with much peace of mind because they can acknowledge that they can put up with it for another six months or year.

We can only begin to imagine the sheer frustration of people when they could be getting towards a work deadline or project or whatever it is, and the Internet is dropping or it is not at the same speed as someone 20 miles down the road in an urban town. It must be absolutely infuriating. If we think about it, people living in rural areas much of the time can be treated as second-class citizens in terms of broadband because they do not have the same level of equality or access to it.

The point was mentioned earlier that we have moved so much more online in every aspect of our lives. There are very few aspects of people’s lives today that are not online and that it why it is so important that broadband will be rolled out into every single corner, parish and rural area of this country. That is the big reason this whole project is vitally important.

Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)
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I thank Senator McGahon for sharing time. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, to the House. This is a gargantuan project. This is, as Senator McGahon rightly referenced, akin to a modern-day electrification of the country. We saw what rural electrification did. This is linked centrally to the ongoing development and evolution of the social and economic development of our country. That is why this project is so important.

I would ask Members of the House who raised legitimate concerns and criticisms of the speed to engage with NBI, which has participated in a series of meetings with us as Members of the Oireachtas, to see first-hand the complexity of what is involved. Many of us have availed of those visits and tours of the NBI network control centre and other places. The transport committee of which I am a member went on a visit to see work being done at the Blessington deployment area before Christmas.

Some €2.6 billion is transformative money in any shape or form. What are we doing? We are facilitating a new generation to be able to participate in e-learning, remote working from home, e-health initiatives, better energy efficiency and different models and methods of farming and monitoring of livestock. The substantial progress, while not as fast as many of us would like, is being achieved. We can start in Cork, Donegal, Roscommon or wherever and look at the progress being made.

I would make the point that we need to hold NBI accountable for the pace of delivery. We have had Covid and issues around different areas that have been associated with the delay, but let us hold it to account. The committee that I am a member of will again tomorrow have a meeting with NBI in regard to the roll-out of the national broadband plan. I can genuinely say that what I have seen is that there is a concerted effort being made to deliver. There are concerns and it is a right to articulate those concerns about the missed targets. We are all concerned about the delays associated with the project. We are at a reflection point, perhaps, right now in the roll-out of the national broadband plan. However, let us look at what has happened in terms of the work being done until now.

I would make just this one point. NBI must lay 1.4 million new poles. What does that mean? Go out on-site and watch the work being done: the working, the surveying, the deployment areas, the physical surveying of walking the route, new poles and new licence agreements with local authorities.There is a compendium here and a joined-up approach. I hope our country can join up the dots and work together to create a synergy.

As I said, this project is transformative and it will benefit all of us. It behoves all of us to support it and to hold National Broadband Ireland, NBI, accountable in order that it delivers on behalf of all of us. I am confident that we will do that. I commend the Minister of State on the work he is doing and on his excellent contribution today and in the committee.

Rebecca Moynihan (Labour)
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I wish to share time with Senator Wall.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.

Rebecca Moynihan (Labour)
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I thank the Minister of State for coming in today. Senator Buttimer was entirely correct when he talked about the significant project the roll-out of broadband will be. The Senator compares it to rural electrification. I would like to compare it to another big project, namely, the late Minister, Donogh O'Malley, making available secondary school education to children, in terms of the potential impact the roll-out of broadband could have. The angle I want to come at it from is the importance of the roll-out of broadband in tackling educational disadvantage. If we leave not only parts of the country but communities in rural areas behind in terms of access to broadband, we will be making a big mistake. That is the equivalent. People learn through information, information is available on the Internet and we access that through broadband. We have seen that, particularly over the past two years of the pandemic.

One of the most disappointing responses to the pandemic was when we closed down schools from January to March last year. In doing that, we cut many children from an educationally disadvantaged background off, even from remote learning, because many of them did not have access given the high-cost of broadband in this country. Some were relying on data in order to be able to access the education they needed. Research from the ESRI and other research institutes around Europe has shown that other countries are providing catch-up funds for children because educational disadvantage has been exacerbated by the pandemic. I would argue that access to broadband is a cause of that.

On a most basic level, it is vital that both schools and education facilities across the country have access to high-quality broadband. It is fundamental to ensure there is no divide in educational equality based on where you live. We saw during the pandemic, when school children and students were required to engage in remote learning, that a lack of access to reliable broadband, or any broadband, quickly became an issue. A lack of not only a good Internet connection but an Internet connection that is accessible and cheap for families from all backgrounds, should never act as a barrier to educational opportunities.

Last year the Whitaker Institute at NUIG, in its policy brief series, noted that one in six higher education students in Ireland is from an area with poor broadband coverage. It went on to note that students from areas with the lowest level of broadband coverage were on average more likely to be socio-economically disadvantaged and that the digital divide had the potential to create significant inequalities in education at all levels. At the same time, we are seeing a greater reliance on technology in our schools and more children are using the Internet to help with their homework. Intrinsic to this is not only basic Internet access, fast Internet access and reliable Internet access, but Internet access that is affordable or, preferably, free for families.

No child in primary or secondary school or in a higher education institution should be put in a position where his or her potential educational achievement or access is being stunted by lack of access to broadband. This is as much an issue of reducing inequalities in our education system as it is about facilitating remote working or helping business. It will have long-term impacts on children across the country if the digital divide that has opened up is not closed. Covid-19 and remote learning brought these issues into stark focus and it is essential that the Government now delivers on the commitments in the national broadband plan and tries to focus on getting free broadband for children from all backgrounds, both urban and rural.

Mark Wall (Labour)
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I, too, welcome the Minister of State to the House today. There are a couple of points I want to raise with him. The first is the broadband connections that has been raised by colleagues in the House. In County Kildare, we have five at present, at Bigstone community hall, Crookstown education centre, Lullymore nature park and Rathmore National School and St. David's National School. These are very good and they are well used. The query I have is on whether that is the end of it. I have been trying to seek more information on this.

The conversation about remote working has been mentioned. A number of rural communities have asked me that question. I pay tribute to the broadband officers in each local authority. The one in Kildare has been particularly good to me every time I have had a query on these connections but I need to know whether that is the end of it. I brought it up previously at the Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands of which I am a member. Obviously, I want to inform those rural communities that such a broadband connection is an option for them. As I said, in those five locations they have worked well but there are other rural areas in south Kildare that could benefit from this.

The conversation has rightly turned in the past number of days to remote working. These locations can assist that. Many people want to have the option, notwithstanding what the Government announced yesterday, to continue to work remotely. In some of the locations I deal with, it is just not possible to continue working remotely. One of the reasons the Government gave yesterday was about Internet quality. That is obviously a problem for so many people where they want to work remotely but it is simply not possible. The query for the Minister of State is on where we can go with that and on what can happen.

I must mention a couple of areas. In the Kilkea-Castledermot area, with which the Acting Chairperson will be familiar, people cannot get a mobile phone connection, never mind a broadband connection. I have raised this at the committee to which I referred earlier when NBI was in with us. It does not provide the peace of mind other Senators talked about here today. It does not provide peace of mind to them that when they go on to the NBI website they are told that it is due in 2023 or 2024. One of the biggest problems I have had - I raised this with the NBI officials when they were in on the day - is that when people see the erection of signs stating that the area is being surveyed and broadband is on the way, everybody gets excited about it but suddenly after the week of the survey, the vans have gone out of the area and that is it. There is no follow-up. I asked NBI to provide follow-up and to inform the people, as other Senators said today, that this is a process that has to be followed. There should be follow-up from the company. NBI should put up a sign after it leaves telling people about it. It should be going house-to-house in that area because they are there for a week. I have seen the vans. It brings great excitement and then, as a couple of Senators mentioned, it is raised with us in terms of what happens next. That is a significant issue and I raise it again today.

The blueways, which the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, his party and the Government have rolled out and which we have welcomed, are great. We need hot spots along those blueways for a number of reasons - obviously, for the tourists who will trail along them but, more importantly, for security. We have seen what has happened in the past number of weeks. We need to know that everybody is safe along those blueways. A couple of hot spots along those blueways would be very welcome. It is something NBI and the Government should consider.

Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein)
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I am not the first to say that broadband is a basic utility in this day and age but, unfortunately, rural communities and some communities in north County Dublin are still waiting for connections. Yesterday, much attention was focused on the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Varadkar’s proposals on the so-called "right to ask to work from home" or, as my colleague, Deputy Louise O’Reilly, more accurately called it, "a charter for employers to say "No"". The question of rights aside, the sad fact is that many workers are not even in a position to ask to work from home because the Internet connection is so poor.Broadband infrastructure is of critical strategic importance not least for the fight against climate change. If we are to achieve the emissions reductions in transport that are essential, a decent broadband network is a prerequisite.

The figures from NBI do not inspire confidence. It was reported in the Business Postlast November that there were only 3,000 connections by third party sellers. We are waiting with bated breath to see the January connection figures. There was a target of 60,000 homes and business premises to be passed by the broadband scheme.It will be very telling for the effectiveness of the acceleration plans and catch-up on Covid delays. We are expecting a plan for that around March, although we accept it will not kick in until 2023 and beyond. We also expected the seven-year programme to be accelerated into a five-year programme, with all this laid out contractually in and around March. The fact that we will not make a reduced target is incredibly worrying, especially in combination with the reports from theBusiness Postand others, which have put into the public domain the serious questions that remain about the financial and corporate arrangements.

There are several operational problems faced currently such as the problems of Eir-NBI duplication and the fact that NBI is dependent on capacity within Eir, Enet and, to a lesser degree, ESB. There were difficulties in crossing lands owned by CIE, although those are largely dealt with. There were difficulties dealing with local authorities and TII. There were planning permission for poles and road opening licence delays and even issues with tree trimming. Updated section 254 guidelines have streamlined dealing with local authorities but there are still problems. NBI has said there is a requirement for dedicated planning and engineering resources in each local authority, particularly to deliver on any possible acceleration. The best case solution would be a planning permission system similar to the system on the north of the island.

On transparency, it is interesting to note the information NBI has made available online in that it is detailed and seems accurate from initial readings. However, it was only published on its website after it was reported in the media, therefore, any claims it is making about how it illustrates its commitment to transparency ring a little hollow.

There are also questions regarding NBI's contract. The Department was warned continuously that the procurement process for this contract was flawed. It was warned by the then Sinn Féin communications spokesperson, Deputy Stanley, by external firms, by procurement experts at University Limerick, and even by the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Robert Watt.

Commitments were given in the previous Dáil that if the company was behind schedule, the State would have ways of protecting itself in the form of penalties. Yet we learned last year that there are no penalties in the contract and there would be only delays to payment, which is hardly a penalty at all. We learned from the Committee on Public Accounts that the company can review and revise the targets. This crazy situation is coming after a litany of other overspends and poor management of Government contracts by Fine Gael.

I highlighted on the Order of Business just this morning the findings of the European Court of Auditors report, which highlighted the failure of the Irish State to avail of EU retrofitting funding. Again, that was under the remit of a Fine Gael Minister. We can see Fine Gael is very poor for major contracts. It is supposed to be the party of prudence yet we have massive delays and overruns across a variety of public projects. The children’s hospital is 500% over budget. Capital expenditure is set to increase over the coming years as a result of the revised national development plan, therefore, it is imperative as taxpayers we get good value for money under this Government. To that end, my colleague, Deputy Farrell, has introduced a Bill to regulate publicly procured capital works. If we are serious about getting value for money from the projects such as the national broadband plan and the ones outlined in the national development plan, there needs to be greater regulation of public procurement spending on capital projects. Deputy Farrell’s Bill is a first step on the road to better value from capital expenditure.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
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I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, for coming to the House to take this matter.

I am very disappointed to read the Minister, Deputy Ryan’s national broadband plan update and to see that a few counties have been left behind on this update, Donegal being one of them. A former Minister, Pat Rabbitte, announced the national broadband plan ten years ago this August. When announcing it, he described the national broadband plan as the rural electrification of the 21st century. Now, a decade later, most of rural Ireland has been left behind in this roll-out. I have been contacted by many people in Donegal regarding this.

Working from home and remote learning have highlighted these broadband issues and many families in the county have become very frustrated at the lack of a stable Internet connection. Many of these families have told me they were informed they have serious connection issues but they will not be getting fibre broadband until 2025 or 2026. It should not be so stressful or take so long to get access to a necessary service. This is completely unacceptable.

Those of us who live in rural Ireland know what a difference it would make to families and others to have proper broadband connection. Why are the most rural, disconnected and forgotten areas of Ireland not being prioritised? Rural Ireland should be prioritised in this roll-out given that this area had the weakest Internet connection from the beginning. Every other county has already seen the start of broadband roll-out but Donegal will not see it until the second half of this year. Why is that? This is a form of enforced inequality and it is not good enough. My colleague, Deputy Pringle, has been calling on the Minister for years to ensure that Donegal is not left behind in the broadband roll-out. I join his call. This has gone on for too long and there needs to be some accountability.

We can see the impact the digital divide is having on people’s ability to access work, health services and education. I have been discussing the digital divide for a long time both in this House and at the Joint Committee on Education and Skills. Rural schools are located in areas where broadband is unstable and it is difficult to teach online and to even teach children in the classroom who do not have access to broadband. Some vulnerable students have also had to fight to access online learning or have not been able to access it at all during school closures. This creates a further digital divide. The reality is that students who have access to the best digital resources will do better and have better outcomes. As my colleague, Senator Ruane, said last week, for many students across the country, having a laptop and broadband are a luxury. Many students lost out oneducation due to the lack of adequatelearning supports and access to online learning just because they live in rural Ireland. We cannot create further inequality and division in this country. It has to end now.

As many Senators have said, we must also examine the cost of broadband roll-out. There is a small road, Crumlin Road, in Ardara where I live and there is no Internet connection in that area. Many areas of the country will not see the roll-out of broadband until at least the end of the year and for Donegal the beginning of the roll-out will not be seen until half-way through the year. That is very disheartening for people. The Tánaiste announced yesterday that people have the right to request to work from home. How can we expect people from Donegal, the forgotten county yet again, to be left behind? It impacts on people and children's lives in terms of having equal opportunities to be successful and to be able to work from home, but many of them do not have that. I urge that we address that.

Eugene Murphy (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister of State. I have no doubt about his commitment to this massive project. The sentiment expressed by everybody is that we must speed up this roll-out as quickly as possible. There have been hindrances along the way, of that there is no question. Covid-19 has been a difficult issue with all these projects.Covid has been a difficult issue for these projects and it does not help with running a smooth situation when hit by a pandemic such as this. I accept the Government is ramping up this project. I understand it is an area of constant debate at Cabinet meetings, etc. The figures are not that bad, but we need to move much faster. We have had many situations with Covid. People are working from home. In future, whatever arrangements happen between employers and employees, we will have a mixed bag of people possibly working two days from home and three days from the office, and vice versa. In my own area of County Roscommon and parts of County Galway I know very well, there is not a week where I do not meet people who are now working from home whose broadband connections just are not there. They may have a private connection. They do not always work, although sometimes they do. If one is out in an area of rural Ireland that is not hugely populated, a commercial firm will not be worried about getting broadband to somebody at the end of the road. That is why the National Broadband Ireland and Government plan needs to be ramped up.

As of 7 January, 290,000 premises have been surveyed. The Minister of State mentioned that surveys are under way. More than 154,000 premises have been constructed or are under construction across all counties. It is nice to see Roscommon, Galway, Leitrim and other places in the midlands and west covered, and that is important. It is important we can continue to talk about rural regeneration and the rural regeneration and development fund. There is great work going on, including in towns in my own county such as Strokestown, Ballaghaderreen and Boyle, and others all over the place. They are getting money to draw up significant plans to re-establish life in their towns. We all want to put that life back into our towns. The piece of the jigsaw that we need is broadband. Sometimes people will say there is a house in the area for sale and ask what it is like. The next question is whether it has broadband. It is becoming like electricity was in the past. It is needed and will be needed by everybody. We all agree with the Town Centre First approach. We need to build the best facilities in our towns.

I acknowledge this is a European problem, not just an Irish problem. I have been reading about problems in Germany, England and parts of France with broadband. We also have to accept that some built-up urban areas have difficulties too. Overall, there are challenges. Broadband is a crucial issue. It is also crucial with regard to the Housing for All policy. We need to use every avenue we can to support and promote what the Government is doing. We need to ramp up the roll-out. There is no doubt that it is happening, but there needs to be a greater emphasis on getting this to rural areas, especially going back to changed work practices after Covid. I am sure the Minister of State will acknowledge that makes it all the more important.

Seán Kyne (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, and the Secretary General of the Department. I was a Minister of State in that Department for a period of time and was involved with some of the work to deliver broadband and the work National Broadband Ireland is now undertaking. It has had a long, difficult gestation, but the contract has been signed, funding has been committed, and work is ongoing. I certainly know other projects can make announcements at different stages and people will say they will not believe it until they see the machines and the diggers. That is part of the issue here. I have always assured people that somebody has to be first to be connected and, unfortunately, somebody has to be last, when connecting every house in the country. It was the same for electrification. The Black Valley in Kerry was the last place to be electrified. A place in Ireland will be the last to be connected, but the important point is that all places will be connected.

The work that is going on, such as surveying, is evident in certain areas. It then has to go through the stages of design, build and connection. Some areas are connected, including my own area on the outskirts of Galway city, Bushypark, Barna and parts of Moycullen. When everybody hears that someone in the next townland has got it, they might be in a different grouping or phase, so it takes some explaining. The maps are there and they are evidence. We have to bring people with it, to see that areas are being connected. It is starting. It is not completing all of one county. It is not starting in Dublin and working its way out. It is starting in every province, in every county, and it is evident from the maps where there is a start point and where there will be a concluding point. I appreciate there will be a delay of a few years until all areas are connected. If we can expedite it through investment or such, that would be welcome. This is a positive story. We know the importance of broadband and of connectivity. We know the capabilities of remote working and working from home. We know the importance of the hubs, hotspots and the with Údarás na Gaeltachta agus an obair atá déanta aige trasna na tíre chun seirbhísí agus áiseanna a chur ar fáil do dhaoine agus gnóthaí le go mbeidh siad in ann oibriú ón mbaile nó óna gceantar féin. Tá sé sin fíorthábhacht.

Hub spots, hotspots and so on are important for progressing the opportunities for remote working, working from home and working in the regions. This is a positive and it is important we recognise that it is a positive, that work is going ahead, and that anything we can do to push it along faster would be appreciated.

Tim Lombard (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State and the officials to the Chamber. We have boots on the ground. That is a positive story about the national broadband plan. I spent five years in the last Seanad sitting on a committee and saw officials working hard to get this contract up and running. I went on public media to promote it when many parties were doing their best to talk it down, to say it was a waste of money, that it was inappropriate and that it was too expensive. These people are now saying it is not being rolled out fast enough. An awful lot of work has been done, we have boots on the ground, and the roll-out is happening. That has to be acknowledged. The amount of work the Department and officials have done has to be acknowledged in this Chamber too. This is a really good news story. We have men and women on the road fitting high-speed broadband for premises. This is what we said we would do and we have got it up and running.

This has benefits, whether it is e-farming, e-commerce or e-education. All can be involved in these now because of the roll-out of the national broadband plan. The biggest problem we will have in five years is that the people of rural Ireland will not have broadband of the same speed. That will be the biggest problem in ten years too. We have been talking to people living in urban areas who have said their neighbour three miles down the road has much faster broadband than their own. That will be the real issue. The problem with this proposal is that it is going to be too successful, and because it will be too successful, urban Ireland will look for a service at the same speed.

Pat Casey (Fianna Fail)
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It has already been mentioned that the importance of broadband will be compared to water infrastructure, electrification and roads. When prioritised, broadband infrastructure is now maybe as important as road infrastructure, because if we can work from home, we do not need the road to take us to work. It has critical importance. Over the last two years of the Covid pandemic, we have identified broadband as a significant need in future, because it allowed a significant proportion of our workforce to work from home.As we, the legislators, begin to discuss legislating for working from home, it is critical that nobody is left behind and that inequality does not exist because a person does not have broadband and cannot avail of working from home.

In the previous Dáil, I participated in a number of broadband debates. I think we can draw a line under that and say that whether we agree or disagree on whatever we did in regard to the roll-out of broadband, we all got a sense of relief in 2019 when, at long last, the contract was signed and we could start delivering this much-needed infrastructure. Senator Dooley and a number of others mentioned that people do not care and that they just want to know when they are going to be connected. They do not want to know that the box in the village is broadband but, sorry, they are still connected to the exchange, or when we roll out to the 300,000 homes through Eir, they are not within 50 m of that connection and, therefore, do not qualify. All of these complexities are just adding to the frustration.

In my community, I can give the exact example of that with regard to our community centre and national school, where the broadband pole was on the footpath outside the premises, yet they could not get connected. That gave the previous Government the example of what was needed. In fairness, the Government came down to St. Kevin's National School and Brockagh Resource Centre in Laragh to launch the national broadband plan. That was a hugely positive day.

The appointment of NBI was another step in the right direction but there is a level of frustration. People have said NBI is great at communicating but, sometimes, the news it is giving is not so great. I come from a rural area and have an understanding of the need for this at home and in business, and my own business was lucky to be one of those 300,000 premises that were able to connect to broadband. I registered with NBI in 2020, when people could put in their Eircode and get updates on it. The road outside my house now seems to be an interchange for NBI vans, given there are that many of them going up and down in the last 18 months. I was saying “It is getting nearer”, and we then saw the poles going in and the cables coming up to the poles. Then, in December 2021, I got an email with the update to the effect that my broadband connection will happen in December 2023, and I just said, “My God, is it that far away?”

The intention of NBI is good. It wants to roll out broadband. Where are the obstacles in this regard? Let us park Covid for a minute. Everybody had to deal with Covid, so let us not use that. How is the infrastructure relationship with Eir working and how successful is that? What is the bureaucracy behind that? Is it working and is NBI getting access to the equipment it needs? When it gets to that equipment, what condition is it in with regard to poles, ducting, cables or space within that? How much of a delay is there? On another aspect, there are still some blockages in the bureaucracy in regard to local authorities. Is that holding it up? NBI needs to get the finger out a bit more and start delivering, and not hide behind excuses.

I will conclude with positive news. It was an honour to welcome the Minister of State on his visit to Brockagh Resource Centre in my community. At the centre, he met the principal of St. Kevin's National School. Brockagh Resource Centre availed of one of the BCPs and it proved to be critical during the pandemic. The principal of the school informed the Minister of State that without that connection, the parents would not have been able to pull into the car park to download the work their children were doing. I thank the Minister of State for that intervention in our community. This is critical for the whole country moving forward. We need to remove whatever obstacles are there.

Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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I wish to share time with Senator Maria Byrne.

Mark Wall (Labour)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.

Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael)
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I listened to Senator Casey talking about a connection date of December 2023. We in Tipperary would love to get it by December 2023. The connection to my house will be is December 2024 and connections to other people's houses in the county will be in 2025 and 2026.

That said, God knows where we would be if we had followed the route advocated by others, especially the Independents who voted against this and wanted to start all over again. I hear with frustration the Independents in my county talking about the slow roll-out of broadband. We would not have even finished the tender process if we did what they suggested a number of years ago. This infrastructure will benefit this society for years to come and it will be remembered like electricity is remembered.

This is a huge opportunity for regional rural towns like Cahir, Clonmel and Tipperary town. There are many people who live in those towns who drive to Cork, Limerick and Waterford to work. In the past two years, that has not happened as much because they have been working from home because of Covid. We do not see the cars parked up on the roads just before they get to the motorways to travel to work because that has not been happening. That situation should continue. We need to increase the pace of this and make sure the opportunities are there for rural towns to prosper on the back of broadband. The knock-on effect this can give to towns like Cahir, Tipperary, Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir is unbelievable in terms of the indirect support it can give a town and the options it gives people to live in rural Ireland.

It is also a massive opportunity for Dublin. My colleague, Councillor Anna Grainger, is very passionate about and supportive of broadband for rural areas because it gives opportunities for people who live in Dublin but want to live in rural Ireland. There are many people who, through the pandemic, have chosen to move to Cork or Galway but still work for a company in Dublin. There are people I know who want to come home to my village, Grange, which is a tiny village, but work for companies in Dublin. They can do that if they have broadband. What this does is it opens up the housing market and three or four bedroom family homes for people who are looking to live in Dublin. There is a massive knock-on effect for Dublin, not just rural Ireland.

Maria Byrne (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for attending to discuss this all-important issue. Covid taught us the importance of working from home and how important broadband is in that regard. Many of us have discussed the lack of availability in rural Ireland but it also affects parts of urban Ireland where the connectivity is very poor. There are streets where there is a very strong connection but there are houses in between where there is a lack of connection. I know of two areas of Limerick like this, and I was recently talking to somebody in Cork who has had 64 different communications with their broadband provider. They are living right in the heart of the city and it is still not sorted. At one stage, there were five people working from the one house off the one connection, so it was pretty poor.

The Government made the right decision on the roll-out, which is progressing. As Senator Dooley noted, sometimes one size does not fit all Perhaps there needs to be a bit more engagement in certain areas. Overall, however, the experience has been positive.

I am delighted to see the schools being included because so many schools had a poor connection. As we know, connectivity and technology is used so much in education but, for a long time, despite so many iPads and different machines being operated in schools, the connectivity was very poor.

The delay is a concern, particularly in light of working from home. On the legislation that is coming out with regard to working from home, it is very important that we get it right. I ask that special attention be paid to areas where there are many complaints or inquiries.

Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State. It is important to point out that we cannot underestimate the decision that was taken by my party in government, Fine Gael, a number of years ago with regard to broadband. It was a very positive decision against much opposition at the time. It is clear through Covid-19, in particular, that it was the right decision to make. We are all delighted that was done and that the infrastructural work that needed to be done to ensure every house has broadband available to it started earlier.

As I said, Covid-19 showed how dependent we are and how elderly people who would never have been au faitwith IT used that service while they were isolated at home. I must admit that while some of the infrastructure is in place, it is still not as good as it should be. I live 50 m from the local exchange and my connection at home still drops at times despite the fact that I live so close to it.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the broadband officer in my local authority with whom I worked while I was a member of Longford County Council, Ms Christine Collins, and the IT team of Mr. Danny Lynch and Ms Maggie Donovan, in particular, for the work they did. They grasped this by appointing the broadband officer. I also think we were one of the first counties in the country to have an officer in place. We have rolled out the broadband connection points across the entire county. We have nine community centres, GAA clubs and local national schools. We have broadband points at all our libraries. All these were used during Covid-19. I thank all those organisations that worked with the local authority to put those provisions in place.

I printed out a list earlier with regard to people getting broadband in my own county. I spoke to one customer who six months ago was supposed to have broadband in quarter 4 of 2022. Now when this person puts in their Eircode postcode, they are informed they will have it between January 2023 and December 2024. That is a 24-month gap as to when this person will get broadband. To be quite honest, that is not good enough from a customer point of view. I ask that NBI gives definite details and times for when people will actually get that service.

Emer Currie (Fine Gael)
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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.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
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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.

Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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I thank Senator Dolan for sharing time with me. I welcome the opportunity to say a few words on the national broadband plan.

I must say, I think it was great foresight on the part of the previous Government to start the campaign and the roll-out of rural broadband. One would have to ask the question now of where we would be and where we would be going if some decision was not made a that particular time when we see the vast advances that have been made in online technology over the past two years in particular since the pandemic took place.

It is amazing, though, that everybody right around the country has the same story, one after another. Mine is no different either. I come from the fairly large town of Castlebar, which is a county town. The main street and main shopping area of the town is the worst part with the result that businesses have to move from the centre of the town to the industrial estates to get proper broadband because the speeds there are better. Something will have to be done fairly fast about it.

A number of very successful businesses have started up online in the last number of years such as Vaughan Shoes, Stauntons Pharmacy and our local newspaper, the Connaught Telegraph. They all operate online and are at a huge disadvantage because of the speeds at the moment. The quicker they can get this in place, the better for their businesses. They are not competing on a level playing pitch at the moment. They are competing with businesses that are living on the information highway while they are on the byroads. That is the way it is. The Minister of State will have to keep a closer eye on the roll-out. The Government must keep the pressure on to keep the milestones up to date and make sure the contractors that are in place deliver on what they are supposed to, and, if they can deliver it ahead of time, all the better.

Regina Doherty (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State and colleagues for their contributions. When the decision was made on this project, support for it was not unanimous support and concerns were articulated by certain people. It is welcome and lovely to hear everyone now saying we should get on with it because everyone wants broadband all around the country. Covid has shown us how important high-speed connection is for all the new advantages and improvements in life we have. It is needed for the delivery of services. I acknowledge that and wish continued success to the programme.

Having said that, I will speak about a flaw in the programme and ask the Minister of State for help. My office is in Skerries which is in County Dublin. The vast majority of the county was part of the commercial part of the roll-out of the plan. When the plan was initiated, it included a guarantee that anyone who was not provided high-speed broadband by the commercial operators would be taken up by NBI. It might have taken a while but there was a guarantee that everyone would get the high-speed broadband we all so desperately require and soon.

I am in the unfortunate position of saying to the Minister of State that a number of people on my road in Skerries do not have broadband. The commercial operators are not going to do it. That is fine but we have engaged with NBI and it will not provide them with broadband either. We have gone back and forth and said it must be wrong. We are not wrong. There are gaps in both aspects of the delivery where neither the NBI nor the commercial operators will fulfil the contract on behalf of the State to provide it.

I have done a wider trawl than just Church Street and Strand Street in Skerries and I found that a significant number of houses, not at the end of country lanes or the forks in roads but in our urban areas, where the broadband connection is not good enough to be able to make the connection, either by commercial operators or NBI. These will not be part of the overall contract that is necessary for us to be able to live in the meta world very soon.

Will the Minister of State ensure a national review and audit of all of those houses are done? Will he meet NBI to find out what the State needs to do to ensure that people who live in Dublin, less than 15 km from the epicentre of the country, cannot get access to high-speed broadband? What will the State do to provide that?

Otherwise, this is a successful roll-out of a national infrastructure which I hope will bring benefits to every single household, town, community, school, GAA club and all the online businesses which have sprung up in the last couple of years because premises have been closed. We have got used to shopping online, visiting our doctor online and availing of all these wonderful new advantages we have. We have the confidence to do so. However, some people are being left behind. They do not have a date in 2023 or 2024 but no date. We need to do a national review and come up with a response to how we will give those people the infrastructure they need.

John Cummins (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I echo many of Senator Paddy Burke's comments on the previous Government's foresight in proceeding with the national broadband plan roll-out. There are always reasons not to do things but a point comes when a decision has to be made to proceed. That said, as other colleagues noted, there is frustrations with the slowness of the roll-out in areas throughout the country. The Minister of State will have a sense of that.

In my home county of Waterford, 15,084 premises are due to be connected through the national broadband plan with an investment of €59 million. However, there is significant frustration with the speed of the roll-out. For example, I received an email from someone last September. The person wrote that they would love to get a reason for the continued delays in the national broadband roll-out in Waterford. They said that they had been informed ten months earlier that they would be connected by August. The website was subsequently updated to advise that it would be February to April 2022 but when they checked again, they were informed it would be August to October 2022. That is one example of dates being pushed out.

I have had a similar experience to that of Senator Doherty where areas that are perceived to be covered by the other commercial providers are not in the intervention area and are not being considered. Those people do not have broadband and they need to be included if they are not served by the existing players.

I will raise a matter that is not one for the Minister of State. I received a lovely email from the PR company that works for National Broadband Ireland during the week. It said that more than 6,300 premises in Waterford had been surveyed. It said that crews had started initial work on the buildout in townlands across Waterford including Kilmacow, Mullinavat, Ballyfacey, Glenmore, Ballycourdra, Kilmeaden and Mooncoin. Only one of those areas is in Waterford and all the rest are in Kilkenny, so there is clearly an issue there.

Martin Conway (Fine Gael)
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I assure the House I will not get involved in the Kilkenny-Waterford battle. We have enough problems of our own in Clare. Decisions were made and decisions are made for various reasons. One that was made in the mid-1990s - the decision to privatise Eircom - was a fundamental mistake. If that had not happened, we would have the infrastructure to provide high-speed broadband to every home in the country. However, it did happen.

The decision made in 2017-2018 by the previous Government to sign the national broadband plan for €3 billion, I think, was roundly criticised by people and unfairly because it was the right decision. As time has gone on, and with Covid and people working remotely, I think we would all agree that €3 billion was value for money for providing broadband to every home in the country. Every home in the country deserves high-speed broadband, just as every home deserves water and electricity. That is how important it is.

There are operational difficulties with areas where commercial providers are supposed to provide services but do not or are not in a position to do so for one reason or another. In that scenario, it behoves the State to provide a broadband service. I have no doubt the Minister of State is committed to delivering this but a review of the national broadband contract would be worthwhile because there are operational difficulties which need to be addressed. Explanations are needed for why certain homes are not getting connected. There is one particular group of houses in Ballyvaughan in County Clare that are not getting broadband. Eir is not providing it and the householders cannot get broadband. I would like an explanation for that. Maybe the Minister of State could check that out on my behalf because I am not getting answers and nor are the people who are living in that particular group of houses.

Broadband is fundamental to balanced regional development. It facilitates working from home, equips people to reduce their carbon footprint and have a healthier work-life balance, creates a healthier environment and gives people more time to spend with their families and in their communities rather than travelling. Once we all accept the principle that broadband has the same importance as water and electricity, it is up to us as a Government and society to deliver it and make it happen. I wish the Minister of State well in that pursuit. I know that those are the goals to which he is also committed.

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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I thank the Senators for all of their contributions. I listened carefully to them and they are all valuable.

The national broadband plan is not like other national broadband plans around Europe that I have come across. I have spoken to other ministries who are trying to do something similar to what we are doing and our plan is different in two basic ways. The first is that we are trying to bring fibre to 100% of premises, that is, to every single home, farm and business. When I said that to other ministries I was told that they were not going to do that and they were going to do wireless as the other method is too expensive. Then I asked how much they were spending and, typically, €2,000 per home is what was being budgeted whereas we have budgeted €5,000. In terms of what we are trying to do, the scale and ambition is much larger but the future-proofing is much stronger. As my background is in communications technologies, I know that one should not rely on a wireless connection. I mean that it is great as a back-up but having a cable or a wire means one is set up for the future. It is good to have a duct or a pole to bring a cable into one's home, which will initially connect at 0.5 Mbps. One can easily upgrade to 20 times that speed with minimal intervention. If it is a 25-year project then we will provide a functioning broadband over 25 years to 1 million people. The sum involved is a very large amount of money but when the project will span 25 years and will reach 1 million people, then it is value for money.

A number of Senators have pointed out that the case for this project has got stronger since the contract was first negotiated. Initially, people debated whether the project was too much or necessary but now everybody can see that broadband is like running water. It is a necessary utility and it is the basic thing that one needs in order to be able to work.

Senator Garvey discussed the fact that for a long time, people wondered how could they bring jobs to rural Ireland and villages, and should a college or training place be set up. This project brings a job because it brings somebody with a job into a village. He or she can work in the village, revitalise it and make the village visibly more vibrant. Also, the technology improves quality of life. As a number of Senators have pointed out, a long commute and a very frequent long commute is closely linked with a poor quality of life and becoming increasingly more tired. To be able to escape having to do that commute every single day, Monday to Friday, is a great benefit. The recent announcement about the right to request to work from home, have a framework and then be able to bring that request to the Workplace Relations Commission, if necessary, to have a change of culture and a basic framework whereby it is expected that everybody will be able to work from home, if possible with the type of job one does, and that links in very closely with this.

I am really optimistic despite the setbacks over the start of the first year. I have been involved in many roll-out projects of different types and I am used to the idea that at the start, there is a valley of doom and that people lose faith before people begin to ramp up. The Senators will have seen for themselves the negativity that was associated, at the start of last year, with the vaccination roll-out and then the great pick up in pace. Not many people felt optimistic this time last year but people get it together.

There was an historical discussion about the contract. For example, there was a question as whether it was a good contract and should it have been done in a different way. The contract is a contract. It is a signed contract and is before my time. I have adopted it and now it is my job to make sure that it is executed, that everybody complies with its contents, that it is done on time and that all of its terms are met. That is the contract we have on both sides. We have a team of people monitoring that. We have outside consultants who are lawyers, accountants and so on. We also have our own staff who are here and are excellent. They monitor it all of the time and making sure that it gets delivered on.

It is a seven-year contract and will run from 2020 to the end of 2026. It will take seven years to deliver the service to 540,000 homes and if we can do that faster then we will. We will try to find any way that we can to accelerate delivery but for a start, we are behind at the moment and we need to get back on track. That is our initial focus.

Senator Keogan talked about the fact that only 5,400 homes have been connected when the original goal was 540,000 premises. There is a difference between the number of homes that have taken up the service and those that have it available. There are 55,000 households where one can order or preorder it but over 5,000 homes have been connected so far.

The objective is to make the service available to everybody but our target is not on uptake. The uptake has been faster than expected. Ultimately, everybody is going to need to have fast broadband and I expect that we will have a very high rate of uptake. Also, the commercial providers have all told me that they are getting much higher uptake than they expected.

There has been a change in mindset about this, as Senators will know. I am sure that they will have heard that from their constituents. People feel that it is not enough to have fibre coming to one's cabinet. People want the fibre to go into their homes because, invariably, there are two parents working, somebody is in college and people want entertainment and everything else. People really want high-quality broadband and view it as something valuable. I think that the price that has been set, at €35 a month, is absolutely worthwhile.

There was a question about the roles of NBI and Eir and how they fit together. NBI has won the contract. NBI is the organisation that will deliver this service but its supplier is Eir and Eir has to prepare the poles that the fibre is strung along. In other cases, the fibre is not strung along poles but goes into ducts underground, which Eir must provide. Eir rents the ducts and poles to NBI over a period of 25 years. There is no direct relationship between the State and Eir in that regard but Eir is a key supplier and the project cannot work without its co-operation.

There was a question about the information being given to customers and a claim that sometimes, it is not good enough. When I started off in this role one would be told on the website that the service would arrive in the next 18 months, and after that one was told that it would be some time in the future. I said that the website should tell people what it thinks it is going to be. Tell people that it is going to be 2025 and, if it changes, take people's email address at the time and update them all of the time. We want to provide people with as much information as possible. If one inputs one's Eircode on the website one will be told to the nearest year when the service will be delivered and that allows people to plan. If people cannot work from their location, they need a back-up and they need something else to fill in for that time, then people will know.

Information can always be improved and I am keen on anything that will improve information. I hope that all of the Senators have received emails with very detailed updates about everything that is happening with the project. We are very open to providing any information sought by the Senators. Mr. Fergal Mulligan is the civil servant who is in charge of the project and he is here in this room along with the assistant secretary, Mr. Ciarán Ó hÓbáin, who is seated behind me. They will arrange one-to-one meetings with any Member who wants to discuss broadband, make suggestions or identify problems. The NBI has met Senators and Deputies who wanted to meet them. I encourage Senators to get that information. I have been all around the country. I have visited as many counties as I could and I will continue to do that just to make sure that I am keeping it real, that I know what is actually happening and that I meet people who are getting connected. I see what happens on the ground.

How do we make the scheme run faster and what are the problems? As I alluded to at the start, NBI is doing this work but its key supplier is Eir and they must have a good working relationship. I have attended the last two NBI board meetings. I have facilitated a recent meeting between NBI and Eir. I know that they are constantly in contact. Eir has a new chief executive and I look forward to meeting him when he is appointed. There will be continuing engagement between them and a lot of work will go into that.

There have been questions about the local authorities granting consent. They must supply section 254 permissions in order to put in a new pole, ducts and so on. Work is being done to make sure that this process runs more smoothly. There is a mobile phone and broadband task force that had historically been set up but had lapsed. The Minister, Deputy Humphreys, has reconvened that meeting. That brings together into one room the Ministers, the local authority leads and the contractors who are doing the work just to make sure that problems are smoothed out. Most counties are working very well at this stage but there is still some improvement to be obtained.

A number of councillors have referred to the benefit that can come in the form of inclusion. Every primary school and every DEIS school are going to be connected to broadband by the end of this year and that work has been accelerated. Connectivity is absolutely vital. Connection to broadband changes the whole dynamic of rural Ireland.The faster I can do that, the better. I understand completely the necessity of doing that.

Some Senators also referred to the fact that we could arrive at a point where if we have delivered 100% fibre broadband to rural Ireland, there would be people in urban areas whose quality of service would not be as good. There are black spots in certain areas. Senator Doherty referred to that. Everybody is entitled to a good service. What is the basic level of service? Senator Keogan mentioned this. There is a universal service obligation for phone services. The basic level of service for Internet connection is extremely low and dates back to dial-up times. We need a universal service obligation. At the moment, we are pointing to 30 Mb as being the basis but we are bringing in a new national digital strategy - probably next week - that will have a much higher target. There are European targets overall. We must head towards being a gigabit country with everybody connected and everybody with that right. I thank Senators for all their input. I am very happy to hear anything directly from them. If any Senator wishes to contact me or my office, I will respond.