National Broadband Ireland is tasked with the roll-out of high-speed fibre broadband to most rural parts of the country. There are people living in townlands in County Tipperary who have been told that it will be two or three years before their areas are even surveyed. They will then be looking at a similar timeframe before the network is rolled out in their areas. I acknowledge that this is a complicated process that will take time. However, surveying these areas can surely be done in a faster timeframe than three years or more. I am calling on the Government to direct National Broadband Ireland to hire more employees to carry out these localised surveys in order that rural areas can look forward to having broadband in a far shorter timeframe.

I thank the Deputy. I met with representatives of National Broadband Ireland last week to raise these issues with them. I know Deputies raise them all the time. We all support the national broadband plan, or at least we all do now, and we all want to see it rolled out as quickly as possible. However, even with the best will and the best intentions, there are technical difficulties. It is a project that will take five to seven years. Approximately 100,000 homes, farms and businesses will be connected every year. We are exploring with National Broadband Ireland and Eir any means possible to speed that up but, as with any big project such as this, it cannot all be done in one year or even two.