Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)
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419. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if his Department will look into the issues around very poor broadband and phone services in rural parts of Laois, particularly in Errill and Rathdowney; the stage that the National Broadband Programme is at for this region; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35201/25]

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael)
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The National Broadband Plan (NBP) is the government's initiative to deliver high speed broadband services to all premises in Ireland.

Errill and Rathdowney are predominantly within the BLUE area on the broadband map which is available on my Department's website: www.gov.ie/en/publication/5634d-national-broadband-plan-map/

The BLUE area represents those areas where commercial providers are either currently delivering or have plans to deliver high-speed broadband services. The Department defines high-speed broadband as a connection with minimum speeds of 30Mbps download and 6Mbps upload.

As per records online at www.openeir.ie/fibre/broadband-checker, Errill and Rathdowney have been included in open eir’s full fibre deployment programme and premises can now order a full fibre gigabit connection, with speeds up to 2Gbps.

If a person lives in the BLUE area and after contacting their Retail Service Provider are told they cannot get access to greater than 30Mbps, they should raise a query via the webform which can be accessed by clicking on “contact us” in the Contact section on www.gov.ie/en/publication/5634d-national-broadband-plan-map/, and the department will escalate with the commercial operator to investigate this matter further.

The AMBER area on the map is to be served by the network deployed under the NBP State led intervention. National Broadband Ireland (NBI) have advised that in County Laois over 11,570 premises are now passed with a high-speed fibre broadband network and over 11,750 premises are available to order/pre-order, with over 4,500 premises now connected. A further circa 1,420 premises in County Laois will be passed by NBI’s high speed fibre broadband by the end of the contract.

Further details are available on specific areas within County Laois can be monitored via nbi.ie/reps. NBI has a dedicated email address, reps@nbi.ie, which can be used by Oireachtas members for specific queries. It should be noted that NBI provide this information for County Laois based on NBI deployment areas rather than exact county boundaries.

Phone service is primarily a matter for mobile network operators, operating on a commercial basis in a liberalised market, regulated by the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg). ComReg is statutorily independent in the exercise of its functions in accordance with section 11 of the Communications Regulation Act 2002.

To assist consumers to choose the network provider that best meets their needs, ComReg continually updates and enhances its online national outdoor mobile coverage map (available at: coveragemap.comreg.ie), which provides information on mobile network operators’ outdoor coverage for 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G mobile networks.