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

That is no bother. The most important assurances that I can give him is that the work is running 12 months ahead of schedule at the moment nationally, which is a massive achievement for the Government. When this was being done first, certain people in this House and certain commentators in the media said it was an awful waste of money. I do not know where those people are today, but I do not hear them crowing about it today or saying that it was a waste of money. The people in the Deputy's constituency, and in my constituency, which borders it, would say that is far from a waste of money. Those political commentators will have their own day out in the near future when this is completed.
I will find out whether the existing works can be truncated. I know from my own constituency that there is always going to be someone at the end of a road where the work stops. In fairness to the contractors working for National Broadband Ireland at the moment, they are all over the country. We pass them everywhere. We see so many of them that they are almost part of the fabric of the local area now. The statistics in relation to this are absolutely phenomenal: 63,000 km of cable laid. That is an absolutely massive feat of engineering. I will come back to the Deputy on the specifics.

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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