Concerns that broadband will only be provided to areas in Kildare that suit commercial interests

It was announced on Wednesday that Eir would help to provide high speed broadband to a further 300,000 homes across Ireland within the next 90 weeks, but Sinn Féin TD for Kildare South, Brian Stanley, has raised his concerns over whether or not they will only provide services to areas that provide commercial value to the company.

“While we welcome the expansion of broadband services in Ireland, a number of concerns have been raised about the future of the 540,000 premises remaining in the intervention area," stated Deputy Stanley.

There are 89,565 properties in Kildare requiring high speed broadband with 67,063 of these covered by commercial operators according to Minister for Communications, Denis Naughten. Deputy Stanley outlined how 9,000 properties would be covered in the new broadband plan, but he is still concerned about the 13,000 properties still to be covered in the County, many in outlying areas.

Map key

AMBER areas - which are the target areas for the State Intervention of the National Broadband Plan. The Mobile Phone and Broadband Taskforce has identified measures in the short term to improve broadband connectivity including in the Amber areas and work is underway to implement these measures.
BLUE areas - where commercial operators are delivering or have indicated plans to deliver high speed broadband services. Operators are continuing to enhance their services in these areas to improve access to high speed broadband and to increase speeds to meet consumer demand and customer requirements.
LIGHT BLUE areas - new areas where commercial operators have committed to concrete plans to deliver high speed broadband in rural areas. The commercial rollout to these areas is primarily Fibre to the Home (FTTH). By 2018, all homes and businesses in these Light Blue areas can expect significant improvement to their broadband services.

"We now have a situation now where Eir, one of bidders for procurement on the National Broadband Plan, has cherry-picked locations to deliver broadband only where it is commercially profitable," he stated.

“This will lead to a situation where some of the remaining harder to reach areas of the country are left without broadband connection as it becomes commercially unappealing for any bidder to deliver high speed broadband to the more remote areas of the country.”

“The Minister must ensure that private commercial interests do not jeopardise the roll out of the National Broadband Plan.

“The timeline for completion of the procurement process has still not been confirmed. This process has been subject to multiple delays and we are still no closer to finding out when roll out of the intervention will commence.”