Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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226. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the reason a property (details supplied) was updated on the NBI website with a possible connection date of 2022, given that this date has now been extended to between January 2025 and December 2026; the reason for this delay; the way his Department plans to address this issue; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46537/21]

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, 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 to roll out a high speed and future proofed broadband network within the Intervention Area which covers 1.1 million people living and working in the over 544,000 premises, including almost 100,000 businesses and farms along with 695 schools.

I am advised by NBI that, as of 17 September, over 250,000 premises across all counties have been surveyed with over 108,000 premises under construction.

In addition to the challenges to the delivery of the NBP due to the Covid-19 pandemic, NBI has faced a range of other challenges due to the sheer scale and complexity of rolling out fibre to the home in a rural environment. These include significant tree trimming to ensure cable can be placed on overhead poles, remediation of ducting that has been in place for many decades, the co-ordination of hundreds of contracting crews and addressing the many issues arising week on week which could not have been foreseen until the build crews commenced work on the ground. The Department has worked closely with NBI to put in place a remedial plan under the Contract. This plan addresses delays experienced by NBI, primarily arising as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and re-baselines milestones for 2021. Work is underway to re-baseline milestones for 2022 and beyond. This has resulted in some changes to timeframes for connection for end-users.

Given the scale and complexity of delivery of the new high speed broadband network under the NBP, I am advised that any dates provided by NBI on its website are based on the best available information at the time and may be subject to change. NBI has recently published details of its full deployment schedule on its website, www.nbi.ie, which enables all premises within the intervention area to have an anticipated service activation date range.

My officials queried the specific issue raised in the Question with NBI who confirmed that this Eircode was always scheduled to be in the later end of the build programme. The network rollout for the National Broadband Plan is divided into 227 Deployment Areas (DAs) across the country. These are typically an area of approximately 25km in radius and in total they cover 96% of Ireland’s landmass. Counties are generally made up of a number of DAs which means there are differing timescales for connection across county areas.

I appreciate people's frustration when they are living so close to a fibre network but cannot get a connection to that network in the immediate term, particularly given the heightened importance of connectivity during the Covid-19 pandemic. The NBP will ensure that in all such cases a future proofed high speed broadband network will be built to serve these premises and work to deliver on this is underway.