Delivery of the National Broadband Plan: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-28 ============================================================ Patrick O'Donovan (FG), Limerick County I thank the Cathaoirleach and Members for their contributions. For the benefit of the House and given the geography of some Members present, I will put on the record that in County Cavan the total investment under the plan is €65 million, the intervention area is 16,780 premises, the number available to preorder at the moment is 15,087 and the number of premises being passed is 14,826. I advise Senator O'Reilly the work will be finished in September. People often think of Dublin as an urban area, but the investment in Dublin is one of the largest considering the size of the county – it has one of the smallest land-masses - at €48 million. The intervention area comprises 12,971 properties and 10,397 have been passed. I advise Senator Comyn that County Louth, which also has a relatively small land-mass, is attracting a big investment of €33 million. The intervention area is just short of 9,000 and the total number of premises passed is 6,817. The work will be finished in August. The first counties to be finished in their entirety will be Kilkenny, Longford and Westmeath, which will be finished in June. I thank people for their remarks on the impact the project has made. On weather, following the devastation of Storm Éowyn, the Government committed to improve resilience in the telecoms sector. I should point out that the Government does not own the telecoms sector, but is an important player in it. The Department continues to engage with a broad range of stakeholders. While Senator Andrews might say we are sitting around, sitting around involves a bit of work every now and again, as is happening at the moment. I would not care if anybody said Senators are just sitting around. They are actually at work. The Department established a telecoms resilience group, which is a voluntary Government regulator and industry forum chaired by the Department to promote resilience and the high availability of telecoms infrastructure. The group was formed to drive collaboration and co-ordination between industry and State entities in the event of incidences. Atlantic hurricanes are landing in Ireland. These are no longer just storms and the winter is particularly difficult. The first thing that is needed for a telecoms network is a power source. People understand that when isolated places, such as the areas I represent in County Limerick, are left without power for a long time, a power source is needed to provide a telecoms service, notwithstanding the fact that thousands of poles in the telecoms sector were flattened by the storm. Since its establishment in 2025, the group has agreed a number of measures to prioritise resilience across the sector through the national emergency co-ordination group. This year the group will examine prioritisation within the fixed fibre network to ensure a similar level of resilience can be progressed. As a rural Deputy, I would be very slow to take on board the suggestion Senator Andrews made about landowners. Many are isolated rural and vulnerable people and, as the Cathaoirleach knows, many are elderly. If we want to transfer liability for dangerous trees to vulnerable older people living on the side of a mountain in south Kerry or west Limerick, I am sure that would not go down well. I am not so certain that is his party's position. If it is, it is certainly a new one on me that he wants landowners to be responsible for taking down trees. There are millions of them and it will cost people a lot of money. I do not know how the Senator will fund that, unless he levies landowners. I urge him to be cautious. It would not do his popularity in rural County Limerick any good. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:52+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-28