Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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62. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the status of the Government's commitment to provide high speed broadband to every house and business in County Donegal; the deadline for same; the number of homes and businesses which have access to high speed broadband; the number of additional homes and businesses which will receive access to high speed broadband in 2017; the number which will receive access in 2018; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48977/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) will ensure high speed broadband access (minimum 30 megabits per second) to all premises in Ireland, regardless of location.  The NBP has been a catalyst in encouraging investment by the telecoms sector so that to date approximately 1.5m or 65% of the 2.3m premises in Ireland can get access to high speed broadband and this footprint is expanding.

In April of this year, I published an updated High Speed Broadband Map which is available at www.broadband.gov.ie. The map shows the areas targeted by commercial operators to provide high speed broadband services and the areas that will be included in the State Intervention Area under the NBP.  The Map is searchable by Eircode/address and is colour coded:

- AMBER areas represent the target areas for the proposed State led Intervention under the NBP and are the subject of an ongoing  procurement process.

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

- Light BLUE areas represent eir's commercial rural deployment plans to rollout high speed broadband to 300,000 premises by the end of 2018 as part of an Agreement signed with me in April.

There are over 101,000 premises in County Donegal, around 68,000 of which fall within a BLUE area of the Map and will be covered by commercial operators. Approximately 12,000 of these 68,000 premises form part of eir's planned rural deployment to deliver high speed broadband to 300,000 premises throughout Ireland between now and the end of 2018.  Figures provided to my Department show that, in Q3 2017, eir's rural deployment passed approximately 5,000 premises in County Donegal.  The remaining 33,000 premises in County Donegal fall within an AMBER area and will be part of the State led Intervention under the National Broadband Plan.

To improve both mobile phone and broadband services in rural Ireland in advance of the rollout of the high speed broadband network to be built in the State intervention area, I established, in July 2016, a Taskforce to identify solutions which can be implemented in the short, medium and long term to alleviate mobile phone and broadband coverage deficits, to identify priority areas for rollout and investigate how better services could be provided to consumers. These solutions will enhance the existing services prior to the full build and rollout of the network planned under the NBP State led intervention. 

Under this Taskforce, engagement between telecommunications operators and local authorities through the Broadband Officers is continuing to strengthen.  These Broadband Officers are acting as single points of contact in local authorities for their communities.  The appointment of these officers is already reaping rewards in terms of ensuring a much greater degree of consistency in engagements with operators and clearing obstacles to developing infrastructure.  There is a link to a list of these local Broadband Officers on my Department's website.