Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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32. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment when he expects a penetration rate of 100% to be achieved under the national broadband plan. [7342/18]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) will deliver high speed broadband access of a minimum 30 megabits per second to 100% of premises in Ireland.

  Today 7 out of 10 of the 2.3 million premises in Ireland have access to high speed broadband. Since this Government came into office almost 400,000 additional premises have access to a high speed broadband service. This will increase to nearly 8 out of 10 premises by the end of this year and by 2020, 9 out of 10 premises will have access to a high speed broadband connection. This is being achieved via a combination of commercial investment and a State led intervention.

Part of that commercial investment is eir’s ongoing rural deployment of high speed broadband to 300,000 premises.  That deployment is targeting a deliverable of circa 40,000 premises per quarter for this year.  Based on that rate of deployment building the NBP high speed network would take approximately three years.

It is a reality of any infrastructure rollout of this scale that there will be those isolated and harder to reach premises and areas which will take longer than this to pass. This is an unavoidable fact. However, it is my firm resolve that the occupants of these premises will not wait any longer than necessary to receive the service they need.

The actions and measures I have initiated through the Mobile Phone and Broadband Taskforce will facilitate as efficient a rollout as possible as well as assisting any ongoing commercial investments.

Working with the Broadband Officers in each Local Authority and with the Department of Rural and Community Development, my Department has identified Strategic Community Points across all counties where services can be connected at an early stage after award of the NBP contract.  As fibre connections to villages and communities continue to improve, so to will public wifi which provides people with greater accessibility to better services.

Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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33. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment his plans to provide broadband to counties Roscommon and Galway further to the withdrawal of a company (details supplied) from the national broadband plan. [7252/18]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Currently some 15,000 premises in Roscommon and 77,000 premises in Galway have access to a high speed broadband service. Of these, around 2,300 premises in Roscommon and 10,800 premises in Galway have been passed as part of eir's on-going rural deployment of Fibre to the Home and can access a high speed broadband service of up to 1000Mbps.

Just over 24,000 premises in County Roscommon and some 57,000 in County Galway do not currently have access to a high speed broadband service. The Government's National Broadband Plan will deliver this service to every single one of these premises via a combination of commercial investment and a State led intervention.

6,000 premises in Roscommon will receive a high speed broadband service through eir's rural deployment before the end of this year, while the remaining 18,000 will be served via the planned State led intervention. In County Galway 18,000 will be served through eir's deployment while 39,000 come under the State intervention.

Other operators are delivering on commercial investment in these counties. SIRO, the Vodafone-ESB joint venture, are currently delivering fibre services in 2 Galway towns, Castlebar and Westport, with plans to roll out fibre services to Roscommon town and Cortober in County Roscommon.

As I outlined in my reply to an earlier question in the House today, my Department's procurement process to engage the company to roll out the high speed network in the intervention area is at an advanced stage. When this process reaches a satisfactory conclusion for Government, a contract will be awarded and the network rollout will commence.  

Delivering high speed broadband to every citizen in Roscommon, Galway and indeed every other county remains my firm commitment and that of the Government.