Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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52. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment when his Department first announced plans to introduce the national broadband plan; the dates on which various Ministers held press conferences to publicise it; the expected commencement and completion dates provided by Ministers at each of these press conferences; the projected commencement date and completion date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48976/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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As I have outlined to the Deputy in previous questions on this topic, since the publication of the National Broadband Plan in 2012 by former Minister Pat Rabbitte, there have been a number of updates provided in respect of its progress.

In April 2014, the Government decided that it needed to scale up the ambition of the plan and allocated significant resources to it. The revised ambition of the NBP now aims to provide access to high speed broadband to every home and business in the country.  Since then, my predecessors and I have held a number of media briefings to inform the public of key milestones in the development of the revised Plan. For example:

- In November 2014 the then Minister, Alex White, published the High Speed Broadband Map and the public consultation ;

- In June 2015,  former Minister White launched the draft Intervention Strategy for public consultation;

- December 2015 saw the publication of the updated High Speed Broadband Map and Strategy and the formal launch of the procurement process by former Minister White;

- In July 2016 I announced the Government decision in relation to the ownership model for the network to be built and the shortlisting of three companies as bidders in the procurement process. I also formally announced the establishment of a Mobile Phone and Broadband Taskforce to consider immediate measures to address telecommunications deficits in rural Ireland;

- In April 2017 I published the finalised High Speed Broadband Map for the NBP procurement process.  This was also the launch of eir's rural fibre broadband deployment to 300,000 premises; 

- In September 2017 I announced that my Department received two detailed submissions from bidders - Eircom Limited and the Granahan McCourt, enet, SSE, John Laing Group plc consortium.  The submissions received means that we are at the final stages of this procurement process.

I am sure that the Deputy will agree that these regular progress reports on the development of this complex national infrastructure plan, at the key milestone stages outlined, is important in order to inform the public of progress.