Fresh doubts have emerged over the target of delivering broadband to all households by 2020. The Department of Communicaitons, Energy and Natural Resources, said last night that a new national broadband contract would not be signed until 2017.

Roll out of the plan is expected to take between three and five years, the department said, meaning the programme may run bheind schedule.

The contract was due to be awarded late this year, but this will not now happen until early next year.

However, the department said it was confident there would be no delay in the building of the infrastructure under the programme.

The launch of the tender has been complicated by a dispute between the department and Eir. The tender is designed to cover the State-subsidised provision of broadband to 750,000 homes, but Eir has said it is targeting 300,000 of these under its expansion play. It said yesterday it would continue to roll out high-speed broadband “ at pace” and continued to target the 300,000 properties.