Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Question 41: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Education and Skills the progress in rolling out next generation broadband in primary schools; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [44836/10]

Mary Coughlan (Donegal South West, Fianna Fail)
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My Department's ICT in Schools Programme addresses four broad areas - the provision of essential ICT infrastructure and networking within schools, the provision of access to broadband connectivity to school, up-skilling teachers' ICT skills and finally, integrating ICT within the curriculum and providing curriculum relevant digital content and software. Since 1998 almost €300m has been invested in the programme with some €50m being invested in broadband for schools.

Under the Schools Broadband Programme connectivity to the internet is routed through a National Broadband Network, developed by HEAnet - the National Education and Research Network provider. HEAnet controls the broadband access to schools, and it provides centrally managed services for schools such as security, anti-spam/anti-virus and content filtering. Access to resources such as on-line versions of Britannica and World Book are also only available through the Schools Broadband Network. A national helpdesk managed by the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) has been established to interface between the network, the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and the schools. It also provides schools with on-going advice and assistance. My Department has secured broadband services on behalf of schools and under the resultant contracts the best available connections, within resources, were provided.

Since commencement of the rollout of phase 2 of the Schools Broadband Programme in 2009 there has been over a 50% increase in bandwidth capacity, this is due to improved bandwidth speeds being made available to schools and the substantial reduction in the number of schools who are connected via satellite. Schools are only offered satellite connections where no alternative was offered during the procurement process. Should a better solution become available from the contractors over the lifetime of the contracts, schools will be migrated to the new solution.