Nicky McFadden (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he will summarise the results achieved for those of the 2011 applicants noted in Parliamentary Question No. 991 of 18 September 2012 by county and by delivery platform dsl, fwa, mobile, satellite and so on, the number, if any, of applicants now remaining in the rural broadband scheme; the position regarding these applicants; the measures that will be taken on behalf of these applicants and when these measures will take place. [53574/12]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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The Rural Broadband Scheme (RBS) was launched last year in recognition of the fact that despite the widespread availability of broadband throughout Ireland, there still remained individual premises that were unable to receive broadband provision. This Scheme is aimed at making a basic broadband service available to un-served premises in rural non-NBS areas.

The Application Phase of the RBS closed on 29 July 2011. The Department received 5,000 applications and of these, approximately 3,700 qualified under the terms of the scheme.

The details of applicants were passed to participating companies and the companies responded to DCENR indicating where they may be able to offer services. A total of 29 companies participated in this part of the Scheme and a total of 2011 applicants gave their consent to receive written offers of service from the participating companies.

Data files concerning these remaining 2011 applicants were sent on 30 March 2011 to the remaining participating companies (29 ISPs, no consents were received from applicants identified by two of the participating ISPs and one other withdrew from the process).

ISPs wrote to applicants during April 2012 with offers of service and sought to conclude matters with applicants (where it was possible to do so) over the period 20th April – 27th July 2012.

With all 29 ISPs having returned data files to the Department, the outcome of the Verification Process was that 509 applicants took up a service offered to them and 1496 applicants did not take up a service.

This can be further broken down on a county basis, showing the number of consents and number of offers accepted per county, along with the relevant percentage measurement as set out in the following table:

The Internet service providers participating in the scheme were not required to provide information regarding the technology used to serve applicants and accordingly it is not possible to provide a breakdown of delivery platform for applicants served through the scheme.

The data returned by the participating service providers indicates that in the case of a total of 6 applicants, it was not possible to provide a service from any of the service providers who made offers.

In these cases, the next step is for my Department to assess what arrangements are necessary to enable a service to be offered to these applicants. However, as the locations in question are so difficult to serve by any of the existing service operators it is unlikely that a standard installation will be a workable solution and once-off solutions might be necessary. Accordingly, the first step is to arrange for the sites in question be visited by one of the Department’s technical officers to assess what, if any, workable solution might be found to assist in providing a basic broadband service at the locations in question. My Department will be contacting the applicants in question shortly to make the necessary arrangements.