National Broadband Plan
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-20
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Patrick O'Donovan (FG), Limerick County

I can confirm that the work is ahead of time. As well as being ahead of schedule, the work is also ahead of budget. When Deputy Moynihan and I first came into the Dáil there was a time when broadband was the be all and end all and came up every second day. You could not stick your head outside the door but someone would take it off over broadband. Thankfully, we made an awful lot of progress.
As of 9 January, National Broadband Ireland reports that 62,996 km of cable has been installed. I do not know how far away the moon is from here, but I think it is a couple of times the distance from here to the moon. Some 181,757 poles have been installed. A total of 568,081 premises have been completed. A total of 567,132 premises have been submitted to Open Eir to make ready for works, and 519,013 premises have had Open Eir works completed. An enormous amount of work has been done.
Deputy Moynihan answered part of the question earlier: we had to start somewhere and we have to finish somewhere. The Deputy made specific points about Ballingeary and Carriganimmy. I will see if they can be truncated with existing works and I will come back to him on that.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-20