Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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248. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the number of homes in County Cork which were provided with a new broadband connection in 2015 and 2016; the number of homes his Department expects will have access to a new connection in 2017 and 2018; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [24996/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The National Broadband Plan (NBP) aims to deliver high speed broadband 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 a State intervention in those areas where commercial investment has not been fully demonstrated.A key principle of the NBP is to support and stimulate commercial investment through policy and regulatory measures. Commercial investment since the publication of the NBP has considerably exceeded expectations. To date, the commercial telecommunications sector has invested over €2.5bn in upgrading and modernising networks which support the provision of high speed broadband and mobile telecoms services. 

There has been significant progress in relation to broadband rollout so that today, approximately 1.4m or 61% of premises in Ireland can get high speed broadband of a minimum of 30 Megabits per second. The NBP has been a catalyst in encouraging investment by the telecoms sector, which is continuing to expand this footprint.

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. This figure includes over 25,300 premises in County Cork. Eir has committed to doing this work over a 90 week period, with an average of 500 premises passed 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 website www.dccae.gov.ie.

In total, over 192,500 of the 267,361 premises in County Cork will be able to access a high speed broadband service through commercial providers by the end of 2018. The remaining c.75,000 premises will be covered by the NBP State Intervention.

Nationally, there were over 50,700 new fixed broadband subscriptions in 2015, and over 50,800 in 2016. This brought the total number of fixed broadband subscriptions to over 1.36m. Further information on this issue is available in ComRegs Quarterly Key Data Report for Q4 2016 which is available at www.comreg.ie.