Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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100. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development the number of broadband connection points that are now operational in Cork; the usage statistics for the broadband connection points if these are available; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [45000/22]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The roll out of the Broadband Connection Point (BCP) network is progressing well. My Department continues to work closely with Local Authority Broadband Officers, colleagues at the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications, and the two commercial partners, National Broadband Ireland and Vodafone, to complete each connection.

There are currently 282 Public BCPs live across the State. There are BCPs live in every county and in some of the most rural and isolated areas, including a number of our off-shore islands.

At present, there are 24 Public BCPs live in Cork County with one more site due for completion in the coming weeks. There are no BCPs live or currently planned within the Cork City Council area.

The usage of the live sites continues to grow from month to month. User numbers are gathered from the WiFi access points, which means that a guest is only counted if they are connected through a WiFi connection. At a number of Public BCPs, wired devices such as desktop PCs, smart screens and whiteboards, printers and scanners are facilitated. When these devices are used they are not captured as guest user sessions.

Across the whole network nationally I can confirm that the amount of monthly new and returning guests using BCP WiFi has grown from around 5,200 in January of this year to over 9,500 in August. Just over 27 terabytes of upload data and 74 terabytes of download data was used in January, which has grown to almost 123 terabytes of upload data and 177 terabytes of download data in August.

In Cork specifically in August 2022 there were 265 users of BCP WiFi, 2,020 gigabytes of data downloaded and 1,230 gigabytes uploaded. It should be noted that Cork County has some particularly well-developed public BCPs that allow access to wired devices, not least those with a focus on education and local enterprise. When the Cork County BCP Network is complete, it will be the largest in Ireland.