Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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136. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the status of the roll-out of the national broadband plan to homes in County Limerick to date; and the steps being taken speed up the overall roll-out in 2022. [10249/22]

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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There are over 99,000 premises in County Limerick of which over 21,000 are within the National Broadband Plan Intervention Area and will receive access to high speed broadband under the State led intervention to be delivered by National Broadband Ireland (NBI). Government investment in County Limerick in the NBP will be in the order of €84 million.

In County Limerick surveying is complete in the Deployment Area of Hospital, pre-works are underway in the Deployment Area of Adare and network build is complete in the Deployment Area of Limerick, with over 12,000 premises surveyed to date, over 4,800 premises under construction and over 2,500 premises available to order or pre-order.

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. My 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.

NBI has implemented a number of measures to help lessen the impact that these challenges have had on the rollout including:-

- Increasing the rate of pole replacement and duct remediation per month;

- Bringing in additional NBI resources;

- Earlier procurement of material used in the build stages; and

- Bringing in additional subcontractors

It remains the ambition of the Government to rollout the National Broadband Plan as quickly as possible. My Department continues to engage with NBI to explore the feasibility of accelerating aspects of the NBP 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. However, the primary focus must be on addressing the delays which have arisen and ensuring that the National Broadband Ireland build programme gets back on track and is building momentum month on month.

Broadband Connection Points (BCPs) are a key element of the NBP providing high speed broadband in every county in advance of the roll out of the fibre to the home network. In County Limerick 13 BCP’s have been installed, as of 11 February 2022. Further details can be found at nbi.ie/bcp-locations/.

In County Limerick 11 schools have been installed by NBI to date for educational access. My Department continues to work with the Department of Education to prioritise schools with no high speed broadband, within the Intervention Area. Further details of schools in scope are available on the NBI website at nbi.ie/primary-schools-list/.