Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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831. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the number of premises forecasted to be covered by the national broadband plan’s intervention by commercial high speed broadband services, by county, by the end of 2016 in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7198/16]

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 is being achieved through a combination of commercial investments and a State led intervention in areas where commercial services will not be provided. The commercial telecommunications sector has invested over €2 billion in network upgrades and enhanced services in the last four years, and is continuing to invest. These very significant investments represent a step change in the quality of broadband services available.

On 22 December 2015, I formally launched the procurement process for the State intervention to provide high quality, high speed broadband to all premises in Ireland that may not be served through commercial investment. The formal procurement process commenced with the publication of the Pre-qualification Questionnaire and Project Information Memorandum. Five responses were received from prospective bidders to this stage of the competitive procurement process by the deadline of 31 March. The responses are now being assessed in line with criteria set down by the Department with a view to selecting qualified provider(s) to proceed to the next stage of the procurement. This second stage in  process will be a formal Invitation to Participate in Dialogue (ITPD) to shortlisted  bidders.

The High Speed Broadband Map 2020, which is available at shows the extent of the State Intervention area. The areas marked BLUE represent those areas where commercial providers are either currently delivering or have plans to deliver high speed broadband services.  The areas market AMBER represent the target areas for the State intervention. Consumers can see whether their individual premises is in the BLUE or AMBER area by entering their Eircode on the Map.

The Map shows that there are currently over 750,000 premises in the AMBER area,  representing 30% of the total of premises in Ireland. The remaining 70%, which comprise 1.6m  premises are in the BLUE area and are expected to be served by commercial operators. The Department is monitoring the  commercial rollout plans of operators to ensure that all of the 1.6m premises will have access to High Speed Broadband of at least 30 mbps.

The county breakdown for the National Broadband Plan Intervention is set out in the following table, with the percentage of premises to be covered by the Intervention and through commercial investment also listed.