Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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470. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources his plans to improve broadband service in an area (details supplied) in rural County Meath. [33697/16]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The National Broadband Plan (NBP) 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 a combination of commercial investment by the telecommunications sector and through a State intervention in those areas where commercial investment has not  been fully demonstrated.  The  formal procurement process for the State Intervention commenced in December 2015. The procurement process aims to identify an entity or entities to build, rollout, operate and deliver high speed broadband of at least 30 Megabits per second upload and 6 Megabits per second download speeds to all premises within the intervention area. The three bidders in the procurement process have indicated that they are proposing a predominantly fibre-to-the-home solution for rural Ireland under the National Broadband plan intervention. Householders and businesses may avail of speeds not just of 30 Megabits per second but potentially 1000 Megabits per second, with businesses potentially availing of symmetrical upload and download speeds. This is a solution that will endure for 25 years and beyond.

The High Speed Broadband Map, which is available at shows the extent of the State Intervention area and provides information on a county by county basis with a breakdown of coverage across the townlands in every county including Co Meath.

The maps shows that the townland of Kellystown falls within the AMBER area and will therefore be included in the State intervention procurement process.  Individuals can check whether their premises is in a BLUE or an AMBER area by scrolling through the map online or entering their Eircode.  The Department also has a dedicated mailbox and anyone with a query in relation to the Map should email the Department, quoting their Eircode, to 

The rollout of services by commercial operators in the BLUE area is being kept under constant review by the Department to ensure that all premises can get access to services, either through commercial investment or the State intervention.

Over 750,000 premises are currently within the State intervention area. This includes over 31,000 premises in County Meath.

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 over 750,000 premises in Ireland, covering 100,000km of road network and 96% of the land area of Ireland.

My Department continues to liaise closely with industry and relevant other Departments and agencies to assist in the commercial deployment of telecommunications networks. The commercial telecommunications sector has invested over €2bn in upgrading and modernising networks which support the provision of high speed broadband and mobile telecoms service, including parts of Co. Meath. These investments will further improve the coverage and quality of broadband and mobile voice and data services throughout the country.

In parallel, and in accordance with commitments in the Programme for Government, Minister Humphreys is leading on the establishment of two regional action groups to help accelerate the broadband network build in rural Ireland, once a contract(s) has been awarded.

In July, I established a Mobile Phone and Broadband Taskforce with my colleague Minister Humphreys to address immediate issues in relation to the quality of mobile phone and broadband coverage. I expect the Taskforce to report by end 2016.

€15m  has been provided for the NBP in my Departments Estimates for 2017 to provide for early stage mobilisation payment that may be required by winning bidder(s).  I have also secured €8m for RTE  which will allow it to free up the 700MHz spectrum band.

In addition, I recently signed Regulations allowing ComReg to proceed with an early 2017 auction of the 3.6GHz radio spectrum band, to provide an 86% increase in total spectrum available for mobile and fixed wireless services.

These initiatives should assist in significantly improving the quality of broadband and mobile phone services across Ireland including County Meath.