Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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In December 2022, my Department published Ireland's Digital Connectivity Strategy which supports the ambition outlined in the National Digital Strategy and sets out a number of ambitious targets, including that:

• all Irish households and businesses will be covered by a Gigabit network no later than 2028
• all populated areas will be covered by 5G no later than 2030, and
• digital connectivity will be delivered to all schools and broadband connection points by 2023

These targets will be achieved through commercial operators investing in their networks, complemented by the State’s National Broadband Plan intervention. When taken together, all premises in the State will have access to high-speed broadband in every part of the country no matter how remote.

The rollout of high speed broadband to all primary schools in Leitrim is now complete.

There are also 11 Broadband Connection Points now available in Leitrim which can be viewed at Broadband Connection Points - NBI.

Commercial operators’ fibre rollouts are progressing at pace. Open eir have already passed over 5,498 homes and businesses in Leitrim with gigabit services, with plans to pass a further c.6,300 homes and businesses over the next 2 – 3 years, bringing their total fibre-based investment in the county to over €5m.

The National Broadband Plan intervention contract provides for the roll out of a high speed and future-proofed broadband network to primarily rural areas. The intervention area covers over 1.1 million people living and working in over 560,000 premises, including almost 100,000 businesses and farms along with some 679 schools.

Fibre broadband will be delivered across Cloone by eir through its commercial rollout (to the Blue areas) and by National Broadband Ireland (NBI) under their Contract with the State (to the Amber areas). NBI have advised that all premises in scope of their rollout in the Cloone area, ie the intervention area, have now been surveyed, with the various deployment areas that are part of Cloone deployment set to be delivered in 2024, 2025 and 2026. By 2026 all homes and businesses in the Cloone area will have access to full fibre broadband with minimum speeds of 500Mbps.

NBI advise that as of 27^thOctober 2023, 191,146 premises are passed across 26 counties and available for immediate connection. 58,332 premises are already connected to the NBP high-speed broadband network.

Furthermore, as of 31^stOctober 963 premises in County Leitrim have now been passed by NBI with a high-speed fibre broadband network and are available for immediate connection, with 235 premises connected so far.

Commercial operators and NBI will continue work in County Leitrim and across all counties over the next three years to complete their fibre rollouts. All efforts are bring made to speed up to the rollout and my Department is working extremely hard with Local Authorities to ensure any barriers encountered by these operators are dealt with quickly through day to day engagement and through the work of the Mobile Phone and Broadband Task force.

Further details are available on specific areas within County Leitrim and can be monitored via nbi.ie/reps. A county update can be selected to provide the overall number of premises in the Intervention Area, the overall Government investment in the county, the number of premises passed and connected to date and the status of each of the Deployment Areas with the anticipated date for connection over the lifetime of the project. NBI has a dedicated email address, reps@nbi.ie, which can be used by Oireachtas members for specific queries.`

Recent ComReg data shows that Quarter 2, 2023 saw a 7.4% increase in fibre broadband subscriptions compared to the first 3 months of the year, and a 33.7% increase when compared to Quarter 2 of 2022. This demonstrates that take-up of fibre connectivity for homes and businesses is increasing significantly as it is deployed to areas where it had previously been unavailable. The same ComReg data also indicates that c.40% of homes and business throughout the State now have access to gigabit services through either fibre (576,856) or cable (359,669) infrastructure.