The Government will be asked to provide an additional €80 million this year to the national broadband plan, the Department of Arts, Culture and Communications has indicated.
Briefing documents provided to Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan state that the €400 million allocated in the budget last October was estimated to be more than €80 million short of capital funding that had been sought for this year.
“Ministerial support is required for an increase in the funding, of some €80 million capital funding, from that allocated to the national broadband plan for 2025,“ say the briefing documents. ”This is required to ensure that the Minister will meet contractual obligations to National Broadband Ireland (which is designing, building and operating the new high-speed fibre broadband network for rural Ireland) in 2025.”
The documents state that €978 million of subsidy had been paid to National Broadband Ireland to date under the national broadband plan contract.
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The documents also say that €41 million in adviser payments and €6 million in local authority payments had been made to date in support of the implementation of the national broadband plan.
In a statement the Department of Arts, Culture and Communications told The Irish Times that, as part of the budget process for 2025, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications – which held the communications portfolio before it was reassigned under the new Government – was allocated €400 million for the deployment of broadband through the national broadband plan project.
“The project has continued to build substantial momentum and recover the time lost through Covid-related delays and it is now on track to deliver in excess of 420,000 premises passed by the end of the year,” it said.
“If this forecasted level of deployment is maintained throughout the year, and these additional premises are passed, then it is estimated that a further €80 million will be needed to meet contractual obligations to pay for milestones that will be achieved.
“A similar approach was adopted in the budgeting processes undertaken both in 2023 and 2024, where a conservative budget figure was agreed at the start of these years and additional funding was then sought when National Broadband Ireland exceeded its forecasted delivery of premises passed in that year. It should be noted that the overall national broadband plan project is currently running under budget and is aiming to be completed in advance of schedule at the end of 2026.”
Separately officials told the Minister in a note marked confidential about what was described as “gigabit urban black spots”.
“There is evidence emerging that certain premises not currently covered by the national broadband plan may prove to be uneconomic for commercial operators to provide a gigabit service to,” it said. “One of the issues that is proving problematic is where there are no existing ducts in urban areas to facilitate connection to premises. The Department of Environment, Climate and Communications is planning to launch a pilot scheme in 2025 to establish if this voucher-based solution could be rolled out to address this problem, known as ‘direct buried leads’, more widely.”
In its statement the new Department of Arts, Culture and Communications said it was currently carrying out a detailed analysis of a range of scenarios where it may be uneconomic or where there were barriers identified inhibiting commercial operators from provide gigabit broadband services to certain premises that are not part of the national broadband plan.
“Once this exercise has been completed, the department will examine the optimal solutions to addressing such potential gigabit black spots,” it said.
“As part of that process, the department will consider whether it would be beneficial to conduct a pilot scheme to assist in making a more informed decision around the various options. It is also important to note that the mobile phone and broadband taskforce is designed to address barriers to the deployment of telecom infrastructure and will focus on actions to address black spots in any case.”
