Dan Neville (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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1143. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the status of the roll-out of broadband in County Limerick. [38281/15]

Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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The Government’s National Broadband Plan (NBP) aims to ensure that every citizen and business, regardless of location, has access to a high quality, high speed broadband service. This will be achieved through a combination of commercial investments and a State led intervention in areas where commercial services will not be provided.On 29 September the Government approved an allocation of €275m for the National Broadband Plan, which will provide the initial stimulus required to deliver the Government's intervention. Combined with commercial investment, this will ensure that 85% of Ireland's premises have high speed broadband by 2018, with 100% coverage by 2020.

Last November I published a national high speed coverage map for 2016. This map is available at .The map shows Ireland with two colours, BLUE and AMBER and was developed based on the most up to date information available at the time of publication. The areas marked BLUE represent those areas where commercial providers are either currently delivering or have plans to deliver high speed broadband services by the end of 2016. The areas marked AMBER represent the target areas for the proposed State intervention.

I can confirm that high speed broadband has been extended to serve 48,872 premises to date in County Limerick with a further 14,826 expected to be served over the next 14 months. The remaining 33,943 premises in county Limerick will be covered by further commercial investment or the NBP intervention.

I would encourage consumers to consult the websites of the various commercial operators to ascertain details of current and planned future deployment plans.

38 responses were received following the publication of the NBP proposed Intervention Strategy in July last. Non-confidential versions of these submissions have been published since last week and can be accessed at .

Meanwhile, my Department continues to review the technical and financial detail relating to potential new commercial investment proposals with a view to updating the intervention area Map. I expect to publish an updated version of the Map and to proceed to formal procurement before the end of the year.

The Government is determined to ensure that the network is built out as quickly as possible and engagement with industry stakeholders has indicated that this could be achieved within 3-5 years of the contract award.

In this context, the NBP proposes that through the combination of commercial investment and State intervention, 85% of addresses in Ireland will have access to high speed services by 2018 with all addresses passed by 2020.