Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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168. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the status of the roll-out of the national broadband strategy in view of the fact that broadband speeds here are among the slowest in Europe; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23291/20]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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The National Broadband Plan (NBP) State led Intervention will be delivered by National Broadband Ireland (NBI) under a contract signed last November.

The NBP network will offer users a high speed broadband service with a minimum download speed of 500Mbps from the outset. This represents an increase from the 150Mbps committed to under the Contract. The current deployment plan forecasts premises passed in all counties within the first 2 years and over 90% of premises in the State having access to high speed broadband within the next four years.

Design work is complete or ongoing in target townlands across 20 counties and steady progress is being made with over 89,000 premises surveyed as of 8 September. This survey work is feeding into detailed designs for each deployment area and laying fibre should commence shortly with the first fibre to the home connections expected around December this year.

Broadband Connection Points (BCPs) are a key element of the NBP and will provide high speed broadband in every county in advance of the roll out of the fibre to the home network. Over 130 BCP sites have been connected by NBI and the high speed broadband service will be switched on in these locations through service provider contracts managed by the Department of Rural and Community Development for publically available sites and by the Department of Education and Skills (DES) for schools. Approximately 300 sites in rural areas are targeted for completion by the end of 2020 including 75 schools. The Department will work with DES to prioritise the remaining schools to be connected over the term of the NBP.

While substantial progress has been made to date, the Covid 19 pandemic has had an impact on the delivery of the fibre network. The extent of this impact is currently being assessed and NBI has committed to put in place measures to mitigate the impact in as far as possible.

The Covid 19 pandemic has also highlighted the importance of good reliable broadband to ensure that citizens across Ireland can avail of remote working, education and other essential online facilities. This is reflected in the commitments in the Programme for Government where delivery of the National Broadband Plan will be a key enabler to many of the policies envisaged particularly around increased levels of remote working. The Programme for Government has committed to seek to accelerate the roll out of the National Broadband Plan. In this regard, my Department continues to engage with NBI to explore the feasibility of accelerating aspects of this rollout to establish the possibility of bringing forward premises which are currently scheduled in years 6 and 7 of the current plan to an earlier date. Exploring the potential to accelerate the network rollout is being undertaken in parallel with the measures required to mitigate delays arising as a result of Covid-19.