I will publish as much of the contract as I legally can. It is a huge contract, running to 2,200 pages or so, and there are legal constraints. A large portion of the contract was published before I assumed office, and I have asked the Department to review with the lawyers how much more of it they can publish within the law. The Deputy will appreciate that I am constrained by the law. We have a system of law and I have to comply with the laws that exist.

This issue is sometimes described as encroachment, where we have defined and agreed an intervention area. A commercial provider is allowed; it is not an exclusion area. A commercial provider is allowed to connect homes in the area if it wants to and thinks it makes sense. The Deputy stated 45,000 homes in the intervention area have been connected by Eir, and while I cannot validate that number, that is 45,000 homes that now have fibre broadband. I understand it is also the intention of NBI to bring fibre to those h…

It is.

I expect we will have revised numbers within two weeks. As to whether it is a negotiation, I am saying that from my mindset. Everything in my life is a negotiation, even right now. The Deputy is right. The Government has this contract, which is a €2.1 billion contract, and it only pays out the money when the company meets the terms. That is where we are at the moment. The company is required to meet its contractual obligations, no matter what and whether we have a conversation with it or not. If it does not meet th…

Within the next two weeks.

It is all very complex, both the construction and the funding. I will start with the construction. The Deputy talked about the different statuses. The first one is where people are being surveyed. The second is where their connection is under construction. The third is where it is available for pre-order and, in other words, people can be connected to the Internet within 90 days. The fourth is where it is available for order and people can be connected within ten days. The fifth is when they are actually connected …

I presume it is signed by the Minister. I will come back to the Deputy on any detailed questions about the contract.

There are 227 deployment areas. They do not match the boundaries of townlands. They split across many administrative boundaries. There is a situation where at the border of a deployment area, one house will be connected and another house is in a later phase. That is frustrating for anybody in that situation. That is a consequence of the design. Part of the design is that construction happens in every county simultaneously. That was a political decision at the start. From an engineering point of view, one might have…

I thank the Deputy. It is not a €3 billion contract; it is a €2.1 billion contract. I have read many estimates of what the cost is or is predicted to be and many different numbers are thrown around. The maximum expenditure on this contract will be €2.1 billion. That is what is in the contract. The contract was agreed in 2019, a year before I took office, and it is my role as Minister of State to implement what is in the contract. The benefits of the contract are huge and very ambitious. They are no less than to bri…

The Deputy asked how I can politically stand over it. I can politically stand over it because it will bring huge, tangible benefits all around the country. It is a fantastic project and it is comparable with rural electrification. If people want a home in Ireland nowadays, they want to know that they have home heating, running water, electricity and broadband. All of those will be available. It is a basic service that allows for a better quality of life. That is why I am happy to stand over it. Regarding investors …

There really is a comparison here with the rural electrification programme. My grandfather worked on the Shannon electrification scheme, the massive hydropower project of the 1920s. It was his first job and he was employed by Siemens because it was Siemens that did the work. That company was brought in to do it. The work was not carried out by civil servants or even by a private Irish company. It was built by Siemens and that is the reality of what happened. The Deputy has asked me again but I have twice told her h…

First, I will answer the Deputy's question about the communication of connection times to people, which is of great interest to them. When I was appointed last year, the website for NBI only contained timelines for those people who would be connected within the next 18 months. After that, people were only told that it would be "some time" in the future. I ask for detailed information to be provided, even if that meant that people were being told they would be connected in 2024, 2025 or 2026. I wanted people to be p…

The Deputy has identified a key difference between the national broadband plan and the commercial delivery of connectivity, which is the reason the NBP was developed. When commercial providers such as SIRO, Eir, or Virgin, for example, go around the country to connect homes, they connect the low-hanging fruit, the commercially-viable and easy-to-access homes. Once they meet something that makes connection not worth it such as a railway line, a river or some other obstacle, they just go up another road instead. As t…

I do not have the number of broadband connection points, BCPs, in County Carlow but I will get those to the Deputy directly. As she said, there are more than 400. Most of the points are funded through the Department of Rural and Community Development under the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, who has a lot of enthusiasm for the connection of broadband connection points. They provide an option for someone who needs broadband. It is a fill-in measure while they wait for the fibre to reach their home. It means there is an …

Returning to the Deputy's original question, there are ten BCPs in Carlow and 12 in Kilkenny. There are areas within the cities, such as Kilkenny city where broadband cannot be accessed. That applies everywhere. With the roll-out of high-speed fibre across rural Ireland someone who is not getting that connection and is in a broadband blackspot in the city will naturally be aggrieved. I am not only the Minister of State with responsibility for rural broadband but for all broadband. Some 78% are living outside in the…

I thank the Deputy. I take his point about wireless operators. I have spoken to some such operators, but now that he says it, I could speak to more. It is a good point. Typically in rural Ireland, broadband is provided by a fixed wireless operator. Somebody erects a mast and it covers the valley. When I stayed in Ballydehob, I was able to get a perfectly good service from a wireless operator, so I understand. The idea with NBI is that when fibre comes to the area, the wireless operator can write to all their custom…

I was in Limerick before Christmas. I was there because we were connecting the first set of 2,366 homes and I wanted to see how it is done physically, where the cables go in and how it is working. I understand there are another 4,812 homes in Limerick that are being connected by cable. The national broadband plan is not just for residential use. It is for every premises, whether it is a business or a farm. It should reach everybody, including the company in Kilmallock the Deputy described. If the Deputy has a parti…

No, not quite. Does the Deputy want me to answer?

The answer is "No". The intervention area is defined. If a commercial provider provides a service in there, NBI can say it does not want to provide a service in there anymore, that it is not commercially viable, that it is costing the company money as a result and it can apply for a compensation payment. If it is interrupting NBI's plan, such as if that area was in between two areas it was trying to connect, then it could apply for a compensation payment. However, it can also opt to connect the customer itself and …

I am saying that-----