20,000 premises in Meath wait for connection as part of the National Broadband Plan

With more than a fifth of homes in Meath reliant on the National Broadband Plan to bring high speed broadband to their doors, it has emerged that not one premises has been yet connected in the county as part of the plan.

Many parts of Meath are still years away from having fibre broadband available, with just 51 per cent of the 20,000 premises awaiting broadband due to be hooked up and operational by the end of 2024, according to current estimates.

Councillors vented their frustration at the slow progress in rolling out the service across the county during a presentation by National Broadband Ireland at yesterday's (Monday) meeting of Meath County Council where TJ Malone, Chief Executive of NBI Deployment gave an update.

Mr Malone said it was the largest telecommunications infrastructure project ever undertaken in the history of the State and that there were over 554,000 premises across the country to be connected during the seven year build programme. This includes 20,389 premises in Meath, with the first of these due to be connected between April and June of this year. He outlined that the plan covered 96 per cent of the land in the country and would involve the deployment of 142,000km of cable.

Nationally, 295,000 homes have been surveyed to date, but just 6,270 have been connected with 1,377 pending. Premises are live in 18 of the 26 counties in the plan, but not yet in Meath.

The Department of Communications identified all premises in the country that do not have access to high speed broadband, known as the intervention area, and awarded the contract to deliver broadband to these homes to National Broadband Ireland.

In Meath, some 23 per cent of all premises fall into the intervention area and by the end of last year, just half of these homes had been surveyed.

Last year construction work started on 14 per cent of homes and by the end of this year, 83 per cent of premises will have been surveyed and the build will have commenced on 44 per cent. The total investment in Meath will be €76 million.

The only part of Meath where the network build is already under way is the East Meath area and outskirts of Drogheda which are part of the Drogheda Deployment area where 2,622 homes are due to be connected between April and June of this year. Work on Dunboyne and Clonee which covers 800 premises, is the only other area where work will commence this year and these premises are due to come on stream between March and May 2023.

According to NBI, the build is due to be complete on 40 per cent of premises by the end of next year, with 51 per cent set to be complete by the end of 2024, 95 per cent by the of 2025 but the remaining five per cent will not be finished until 2026, meaning many homes still face a lengthy wait before they will have access to high speed broadband.

There was a huge amount of frustration amongst councillors at the slow rate of progress in rolling out the plan at Monday's meeting.

For homes in the Trim Deployment area which includes 2,241 premises, the survey is still pending with an estimated connection of between January 2025 and December 2026. In Dunshaughlin, there are 2,199 homes identified with the same timeframe given.

In the Navan Deployment area, there are 3,315 homes in the intervention area which are down for connection between January of next year and the end of 2024.

The meeting also heard that 15 broadband connection points planned for Meath are now live and that there are 29 schools in the intervention area in Meath which will be connected to a high speed wireless connection until fibre is available. Four of these schools are now live and five are in progress.

Mr Malone said it how fast they can roll out broadband in any county was dependant being able to get road opening licences and section 254 licences to put up poles.

Cllr Paul McCabe who put forward the motion in October calling for an update from NBI said the project had been completely beset by delays and that end of year targets for 2021 had been missed and added that it seemed very little had happened since the last presentation in July 2020.

"The people I represent have absolutely no confidence in National Broadband Ireland, in the National Broadband Plan or their prospect of getting high speed broadband into their homes any time soon," he said.

Cllr Noel French said he was disappointed that most of Meath has not been surveyed and said he was losing confidence and it was going on too long. He commented that from a target of having 115,000 homes connected to just 6,700 was "some drop".

"This programme is costing the taxpayer €3bn euro and I would like to see some results for all of that."

Cllr Paddy Meade said areas of Meath like Lobinstown, Rathkenny, Beauparc and Donore were being left behind and these areas were among the last to receive telephones and appeared they would be the last to have broadband too. He said that as a councillor he felt he was being left behind as a lot of meetings were online and he does not have broadband in his home in Lobinstown. He also said jobs were being put of risk and that he knew one company that left Grangegeeth because of broadband.

Cllr Michael Gallagher said North Meath from Kingscourt to Oldcastle had very poor broadband and people couldn't work from home. "Broadband is as important now as ESB was in the thirties," he said.

Mr Malone outlined that they were behind because of Covid on surveys and design but had caught up and while they had missed some targets on completions, they were catching up and were committed to getting the project finished in the original timeframe. He said 154,000 premises are under construction which is 30,000 less than they had planned for this time.

Cllr Damien O'Reilly said councillors were passing on the anger felt by constituents who thought there was hope at the end of the tunnel to find it would be 2026 before they are connected.

A number of councillors questioned the two-year timeframe being given saying it as too broad. Mr Malone said once they get to low level planning they would be able to give a narrower time frame.

Cathaoirleach, Cllr Sean Drew concluded the discussion saying: "You can hear the frustration that's out there. Some of this is within your control, some is not, but the proof of the pudding is Meath isn't in the list of counties where you have a connection yet. That is what we want to see and our constituents want to see and want us to represent them on- to get Meath connected."