2026-05-14

I wish to raise with the Minister of State today the issue of urban broadband. The national broadband plan has been hugely successful. It committed to connecting more than 1 million people to fibre broadband. When it was being proposed and introduced, it received a lot of criticism for its level of ambition and cost. Several years later, though, we can see how successful it has actually been, with more than 450,000 premises connected and another 492,000 premises available for preorder already on order. However, it has not covered all of the country, as the name "national broadband" implies. We have pockets of gaps. We have black spots or, as I prefer to call them, broadband islands. These are in our urban areas where you are surrounded by wonderful connectivity but your road or area has very limited connectivity. These have been bypassed by the traditional commercial providers, yet it was quite reasonable to expect that, as part of the national broadband plan, they would somehow be picked up. My Fine Gael colleague, Councillor John Kennedy, and I have been repeatedly raising this issue in recent years on behalf of our residents in Kerrymount Rise, the Thicket, Stillorgan Wood, Torquay Wood, Westminster Lawns and other areas throughout my constituency of Dublin Rathdown. It is not just my constituency, but also other areas of Dublin. Deputy Grace Boland of Dublin Fingal West, one of the fastest growing constituencies in Dublin, has also had similar issues in her area, with her residents in Skerries, Lusk and Balbriggan also reporting connectivity and poor broadband issues. This is not a trivial issue. I have had residents say to me repeatedly that they have jobs where they can work from home but they cannot do so because they do not have the broadband connectivity to enable it. A report published recently by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Chamber of Commerce, developed by Sunstone, found that almost 20% of workers in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown worked from home - one of the highest percentages. However, it would probably be higher if more people had connectivity. This does not just affect workers. It also affects our students, who cannot connect to their online resources when they go home, and businesses. That same report from Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown chamber also found that about 20% of businesses in the county did not even have an online presence. I wonder how much of that is due to the fact they do not have the connectivity where their businesses or homes are to keep an eye on their websites or online presence. We have an issue here and I want to see how it is going to be addressed. We understand that there are legacy issues. For example, one of the issues is direct buried leads, which are difficult to get at and are not attractive for the commercial operators to prioritise right now. They will eventually get around to them. Just as we have committed to fibre to the home for people around the country as part of the national broadband plan, the residents in my constituency of Dublin Rathdown are also entitled to that, and they should not just be expected to settle for fibre to the cabinet. Could the Minister of State please consider the issues my constituents and those in multiple other constituencies in Dublin are facing, and how will he work with the various Departments to try to address these broadband islands or black spots in our urban areas?

I would like to thank Deputy O'Connell for providing a debate on this important Topical Issue. I welcome the opportunity to outline the position on behalf of the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport. As the Deputy has outlined, the national broadband plan, NBP, is the Government’s initiative to deliver high-speed broadband to every household, business and farm in Ireland, ensuring all premises in the country are covered by a gigabit network no later than 2028. It is the largest infrastructural project in rural Ireland since rural electrification, spanning 96% of Ireland's landmass. The NBP is delivering high-speed broadband to over 1.1 million people in more than 23% of premises in the State. This includes over 64,410 farms, 26,350 non-farm businesses, 693 schools and 27 islands and it is fast transforming those communities. As one of the largest public investments in the State’s history, the national broadband plan is designed to address market failure, ensuring universal high-speed connectivity and supporting balanced economic growth, competitiveness and social inclusion across all regions. We are delivering strong progress on these challenging targets. Deployment momentum is strong and the main infrastructure build is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2026, bringing the project in ahead of schedule and running under budget. In addition, commercial deployments have also advanced strongly, with the latest figures released from the regulator showing that 90% of premises now have access to gigabit connectivity, which is a significant increase of 32% since 2020. As part of the roll-out, the Government identified a need to deliver broadband services where commercial operators would not operate. National Broadband Ireland was appointed to deliver the wholesale broadband service to those parts of the country located in the intervention areas. Already, over 1.5 million homes have been passed across the State, and this will complement the Government's priority around the digital connectivity strategy, ensuring Ireland has a multitude of connectivity in regard to fixed-line operators while also delivering the plan for high-speed broadband services in the non-intervention areas. Actually, I want to correct that. In support of the national broadband plan, Eir has already passed over 1.5 million homes across the State. SIRO has reached a milestone of having passed over 700,000 premises for full broadband. Virgin Media has advised the Department that it has upgraded its services to over 700,000 premises with full broadband. The Department is continuing to monitor upgrades by commercial operators to ensure that any unnecessary barriers to the availability of high-speed fibre broadband are addressed and the risk of any gigabit service-challenged areas is managed. Information gathering and detailed analysis is ongoing with the operators and it is understood that a full-scale risk assessment will ensure that any potential gigabit challenges are addressed. These data will complement the initial analysis already conducted by the Department. The Department is working closely with the commercial operators in reviewing all of the scenarios that the Deputy has raised in regards to direct buried leads. Analysis by the Department will continue to provide avenues to address and optimise policy in regard to other areas where black spots need connections.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit for his reply. He mentioned a couple of things in his response about market failures, which is what the national broadband plan sought to address. I would argue that what we are dealing with here in all of the areas I highlighted in Stillorgan, Foxrock and Cabinteely are market failures. They are, to use the Minister of State's own terminology, "gigabit service-challenged areas". People cannot work from home in these areas. The current service is completely insufficient. I welcome that the Department is working very closely with the commercial operators. I would be interested to know what information is being gathered in that regard. Are all of these areas being identified and listed? Are they being measured and assessed? On identifying all of those black spots, what is the plan around that? Is there a plan? The Minister of State said that the NBP was going to come in under budget. Will that budget be transferred to address the remaining black spots or will we be looking for a new plan, working with the commercial operators, or a sort of mini-national broadband plan or national broadband plan phase 2 to try to address these gaps? These things are very important. The timeline is important to my residents. They have been listening to this story about roll-outs and the success stories, with towns and villages across the country being celebrated as great successes, yet they continue to have no service and they have no timeline as to when they are going to get a service. The Minister of State works in the Department of enterprise. I refer him to my earlier comments about the percentage of people working from home in my constituency and the percentage of businesses there that are not online. Thus, there are opportunities that we are missing simply because we do not have sufficient urban broadband throughout Dublin Rathdown.

Regarding the Deputy's constituents and residents who have raised concerns with her, and anyone living in non-intervention areas or areas that are served by commercial operators - the likes of Open Eir, SIRO and Virgin Media - if they cannot get access to greater than 30 Mbps of broadband service after contacting their retail service providers, they should raise queries with the Department through its website under "Contact Us". There is a section within the national broadband plan. It is important that we escalate this issue to commercial operators. It is important that people have a service, that issues be investigated and that their services be upgraded to meet their level of need. Indeed, the Commission for Communications Regulation provides an online broadband checker on its website. This shows availability, allowing people, especially those with an eircode, to check. We want to ensure that the information checker reflects the lived reality in the network operator areas. If you cannot work from home because you do not have adequate connectivity, that is a problem and something we want to fix. We want to work with private operators to do that. We want to hold them to account, especially those that are currently providing services, and ensure that they are upgrading those services. We are working on measures to make the process of accessing existing infrastructure easier, ensuring that new housing developments are designed and facilitated with telecommunications connectivity to address any potential gigabit service challenges. We need to continue to hold private operators to account in regard to their current licences. The Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, and I will work with the Deputy on the specific black spot areas she has raised here today.