Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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29. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the status of rural broadband roll-out in County Meath. [23919/18]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) aims to 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. Today, 7 out of 10 of the 2.3 million premises in Ireland have access to high speed broadband. 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. In April 2017 I published an updated High Speed Broadband Map which is available at . This 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 colour coded and is searchable by address/eircode:

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

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

- The LIGHT BLUE areas represent eir's commercial rural deployment plans to rollout high speed broadband to 300,000 premises by the as part of a Commitment Agreement signed with me in April 2017.

The Commitment Agreement signed with eir relates to its plans to provide high speed broadband to 300,000 premises in rural areas on a commercial basis. Information on eir's planned rural deployment is available at . A copy of the Commitment Agreement is available on my Department’s website .

Data for Q1 2018 recently submitted by eir to my Department indicates that the company has passed some 145,000 premises nationwide as part of its ongoing deployment. eir has signalled that there would be likely knock-on effects to the 2018 milestone targets due to the severe weather impacts of both storms Ophelia and Emma. I have met with the senior management in eir and expressed to them the importance of implementing measures to catch up with milestone targets as a priority.

There are over 84,000 premises in County Meath of which approximately 64,500 fall within a BLUE area of the Map and will be covered by commercial operators.  Of these, nearly 4,500 premises are part of eir's planned rural deployment to deliver rural high speed broadband.  The remaining approximately 19,500 premises in County Meath fall within an AMBER area and will be part of the State led Intervention under the NBP. 

My Department is in a formal procurement process to select a company who will roll-out a new high speed broadband network in the State intervention area. That procurement process is now in its final stages.

For those premises currently awaiting access to high speed broadband, practical initiatives will continue to be addressed through the work of the Mobile Phone and Broadband Taskforce to address obstacles and improve connectivity in respect of existing and future mobile phone and broadband services.

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. The Department of Rural and Community Development maintain a list of Broadband Officers, a link to which is available on my Department's website at .