Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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232. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to set down the number of homes and businesses that have been connected to high speed broadband since the announcement of the agreement with a company (details supplied); and the locations of each. [22365/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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On the 4 April, I signed a commitment agreement with eir in relation to its plans to provide broadband to an additional 300,000 premises in rural areas on a commercial basis.  Eir has committed to concluding this work over a 90 week period, an average of nearly 500 premises per day.  My Department will be monitoring this rollout to ensure that eir meets its obligations under the Agreement.  A copy of the Commitment Agreement is available on my Department's website.

Quarterly updates will be published on the Departments website. The Q1 2017 update will be published shortly and the eir rollout is in line with the Commitment Agreement. I am advised that in the period from 1 January to end March 2017, 30,064 premises have been passed. This brings to 40,114 the total subset of the 300k premises that eir has passed since they commenced work in late 2016. Of those, over 1,400 premises have been connected. Further information on eir's planned rural deployment is available at .

On the same day I published  an updated High Speed Broadband Map which finalises the State Intervention area under the National Broadband Plan. The updated Map shows Ireland with two colours, BLUE and AMBER:

- The BLUE areas represent those areas where commercial telecommunications providers are either currently delivering or have indicated plans to deliver high speed broadband services,

- The AMBER areas on the High Speed Broadband Map represent the areas that will require State Intervention and are the subject of the current procurement process.

It is intended that all premises will have access to services of at least 30 megabits per second when the procurement process for the State intervention is completed and the network rolled out.

Individuals can themselves check whether their premises is in a BLUE or an AMBER area by accessing the High Speed Broadband Map and entering their Eircode at www.broadband.gov.ie. Consumers in BLUE areas who cannot access High Speed Broadband are encouraged to notify the Department at NBPBroadband@dccae.gov.ie, quoting their eircode. The Department is working with the operators, the local authorities and other key stakeholders on resolutions for black spot areas.