Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 4 December 2025
308. Deputy Colm Burke asked the Minister for Culture; Communications and Sport the action his Department is taking to ensure that certain households are not left behind in the roll out of the National Broadband Plan, (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [68967/25]
View answerIreland's Digital Connectivity Strategy, published by my Department, sets ambitious targets, which include providing a Gigabit network to all households and businesses in Ireland by 2028 and access to 5G in all populated areas by 2030.
The Government is committed to the rollout of highspeed broadband across the country, and the National Broadband Plan (NBP) is the Government's initiative to deliver high speed broadband services to all premises in Ireland.
The National Broadband Plan (NBP) will be delivered through investment by commercial enterprises coupled with intervention by the State in those parts of the country (Intervention Area) where private companies have no plans to invest.
It is unclear from the question where in the country the query emanates from and whether it relates to the Intervention area (IA) (Amber) or to an area where HSBB is being delivered by commercial operators (Blue) on the broadband map which is available on www.gov.ie/en/publication/5634d-national-broadband-plan-map/, however I am advised by National Broadband Ireland (NBI) that there are over 564,000 premises in the IA and design work has been completed for 100% of these. NBI anticipated they would pass 420,000 premises by the end of 2025. NBI have exceeded that figure in already passing over 439,700 premises in the intervention area and are connecting on average 4,500 premises to their fibre network per month.
Along with the NBP intervention contract (with National Broadband Ireland (NBI)), progress is being made by commercial operators in expanding their next generation networks throughout the State and ensuring the targets set out in the Digital Connectivity 2022 strategy are achieved. The Department defines high-speed broadband as a connection with minimum speeds of 30Mbps download and 6Mbps upload.
Commercial Fixed line operators Open Eir, Virgin Media and SIRO are currently delivering or have plans to deliver high-speed broadband services in the blue area on the broadband map.
Commercial operators’ fibre rollouts are progressing at pace, open eir have already passed over 1.4 million homes. SIRO has recently reached a milestone of having passed over 700,000 premises for full fibre. Virgin Media plan to bring gigabit broadband upgrades to 1 million premises, to date it has passed 550,000 premises with full fibre. The activities of commercial operators delivering high-speed broadband within BLUE areas are not planned or funded by the State and the Department has no statutory authority to intervene in that regard.
