Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael)
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19. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the up-to-date position regarding the roll-out of the National Broadband Plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50281/23]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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Commercial operators’ fibre rollouts are progressing at pace. Open eir, as part of their IFN fibre programme currently rolling out nationwide, plan to connect over 1.9m premises to their commercial fibre network by 2026. Open eir have already passed over 44,000 homes and businesses to gigabit services in Co. Kerry, with a further c.19,000 premises passed over the next 2 – 3 years, bringing their total fibre-based investment in the county to over €36m. Other commercial operators are also continuing to increase their network footprint right across the state.

SIRO has recently reached a milestone of enabling over 555,000 premises for full fibre and is on track to reach 700,000 premises by 2026. Virgin Media recently announced a €200 million investment plan to upgrade its cable network to bring full fibre to up to 1 million premises over the next three years, to date it has passed 252,000 premises with full fibre.

Along with the progress made by commercial operators’ in expanding their next generation networks throughout the State, 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.

I am advised by NBI that more than 200,000 homes and businesses can access NBI’s high-speed fibre network

Over 60,000 premises are already connected to the NBP high-speed broadband network. In the Deputy’s own county of Kerry, over 11,400 homes and businesses have been passed by NBI and are available for immediate connection, with c. 2,952 of those now connected to the NBP State Intervention network.

Every premises on every Island in the Intervention Area will be provided with access to high-speed broadband connectivity as part of the overall NBP deployment.

The Department continues to work with NBI and local stakeholders to accelerate the rollout to some of the larger Islands such as Valentia and Achill.

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. As of 03^rdNovember some 952 sites have been installed 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.

NBI also reports that the necessary infrastructure is installed in 669 Primary Schools in the Intervention area with 29 installed by other operators as agreed with the Department of Education and the remaining installed by NBI. NBI reports that 500 schools have been connected and are live. Further details can be found at nbi.ie/bcp-locations/.

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 .