Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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561. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if Eir's recent expansion of its rural broadband roll-out scheme will impact on the Government's national broadband plan; if the 300,000 homes covered by Eir include homes earmarked under the Government's scheme; if this will affect the plan's application for European Union funding, as a private company is already providing broadband to a number of areas in rural Ireland; if an updated plan is under way taking into account private sector involvement; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [5105/16]

Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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The National Broadband Plan aims to ensure that every citizen and business, regardless of location, has access to a high quality, high speed broadband service. This is being achieved through a combination of commercial investments and a State led intervention in areas where commercial services will not be provided. The Department strongly welcomes and encourages ongoing commercial investment in high speed broadband services.

The EU State Aid Guidelines for Broadband require Member States to thoroughly evaluate any commercial plans so as to ensure that State Aid is confined to those areas where commercial investment in high speed broadband services is unlikely to occur in the foreseeable future. 

The Department has had extensive engagement with operators to identify those areas where there are concrete plans to roll out high speed broadband on a commercial basis.  Such areas will be excluded from the proposed State intervention.  In October 2015 the Department published the process it proposed to adopt in order to assess commercial high speed broadband investment plans.

Plans received from commercial operators were subsequently assessed under technical, deployment and financial criteria, in line with the EU State Aid requirements.  This resulted in the publication of the High Speed Broadband Map 2020 in December 2015. No additional commercial plans have been submitted since the 2020 map was launched in December 2015.

The Map is a critical aspect of EU State Aid compliance and the mapping process remains open, in accordance with terms that have been published on the Department's website () so that any new developments can be managed.

The Department will update the Map during procurement where a commercial plan is deemed to comply with the Department’s assessment criteria and the operator signs the required Commitment Agreement. Any consequent changes to the areas requiring state investment will not require a change to the NBP intervention strategy but will serve to reduce the areas identified for state investment. Furthermore, where additional commercial developments occur, these should accelerate the roll-out of high speed broadband nationally.  

In delivering a combination of commercial and State-led investment in high speed broadband, the National Broadband Plan aims to ensure that 85% of all premises in Ireland have access to high speed broadband by 2018, with 100% having access by 2020.