Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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71. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if his Department has a policy to ensure both 100% geographic and population 5G mobile phone coverage, as part of the roll-out of 5G and the parallel roll-out of the National Broadband Plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27497/24]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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Ireland has a fully liberalised and competitive market for 4G and 5G mobile network services. In 2023, following the completion of the Multi-band Spectrum Award of 2022, ComReg awarded new radio spectrum to operators allowing them to roll out additional network capacity. These licenses contain obligations requiring the operators to achieve coverage and capacity targets within clear timeframes.

Eir, Vodafone and Three are obliged to cover 99% of the population and 90% of the geographic area of the State within 3 years of the award, i.e. by 2026.

The legal commitments contained in these licenses align with the government’s policy laid out in the Harnessing Digital strategy to cover all populated areas with 5G by 2030. There is no strategy to provide 100% geographical coverage.

It is my Department’s policy, as set out in the current Digital Connectivity strategy, to support the adoption of enhanced mobile connectivity solutions based on 5G. My Department continues to work with industry through the Mobile Phone & Broadband Taskforce to implement actions designed to remove barriers to telecoms infrastructure roll-out.

As regards the National Broadband Plan, as of 19 June, 262,000 premises have been passed by National Broadband Ireland and the project is on schedule to provide Gigabit fibre connectivity to 564,000 premises by 2028. This future-proof digital infrastructure, covering some of the more remote and rural areas of the State, will facilitate the roll-out of 5G small cells to enhance the mobile services available in these areas. Additionally, Wi-Fi calling is now available on the 3 mobile networks and this has enabled a significant improvement in indoor mobile coverage particularly where fibre-based broadband has been made available.