Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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30. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if any of the preferred bidders for the broadband scheme have indicated they are already rolling out high-speed broadband in areas proposed to be covered by the national broadband scheme; if so, if it will require his Department to adjust the areas to be covered; the delay this is likely to cause for the tendering process; the amount of money set aside in each of the next three years under the capital allocation to his Department for the national broadband scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31833/16]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The National Broadband Plan aims to deliver high speed services to every city, town, village and individual premises in Ireland. The Programme for Government commits to the delivery of the NBP as a matter of priority.  This is being achieved through private investment by commercial telecommunications companies and through a State intervention in areas where commercial investment has not been fully demonstrated.

The Department is now in a formal procurement process to select a company or companies who will roll-out a new high speed broadband network to the over 750,000 premises in Ireland, covering 100,000km of road network and 96% of the land area of Ireland. Intensive dialogue with bidders is continuing and the three bidders have indicated that they are proposing a predominantly fibre-to-the-home solution.  Householders and businesses may get speeds not just of 30 Megabits per second but potentially 1,000 Megabits per second with businesses potentially availing of symmetrical upload and download speeds.

In 2015, my Department consulted on, and published the process for managing the high speed broadband map. This includes financial, technical and deployment criteria under which industry investment proposals would be assessed. The Department also published the Heads of a Draft Commitment Agreement which would ask operators to enter into a binding commitment with respect to their plans. Several operators submitted plans at that time which were assessed by the Department in accordance with the criteria. To date, no company has satisfied all of the criteria and signed a Commitment Agreement.  This process for dealing with the Map is important for citizens and industry. The NBP aims to ensure that all premises, regardless of location, have access to high speed services. In order to achieve this objective, we must ensure that where investment plans for high speed broadband are promised, they materialise in full. As the Department is currently engaged in the procurement process it would not be appropriate for me to comment on any interaction with bidders in the process.

While the Government's Capital Investment Plan includes an initial provision of €275m for the NBP up to 2021, the level of exchequer funding required for the NBP will only be known after bidders provide their estimates of cost and subsidy requirements.