When the national broadband plan was agreed by the previous Government it was to have connected 115,000 homes by next January but that was revised downwards to 60,000 homes. However, we know only 2,700 homes have been connected. We both know this is very important. If I ask the Taoiseach about the delays he will say they are due to Covid. My specific question is how much Exchequer funding has been spent on the broadband plan since he became Taoiseach?

I do not have that specific amount but I will seek that figure for the Deputy. I would be concerned about that. The national broadband plan is a contract that was developed some years ago and it is being delivered by National Broadband Ireland. Obviously, Covid impacted its initial work. There is no point in pretending it did not; it did. It has made steady progress on the delivery of the new high-speed fibre broadband network under the broadband plan. It states that more than 30,000 premises are available for order-pre-order across 12 counties, including Cavan, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Monaghan, Roscommon, Wicklow, Tipperary, Kerry, Clare, Carlow and Louth. As of 29 October, National Broadband Ireland has advised that almost 273,000 premises have been surveyed and build works involving more than 125,000 premises are ongoing across the country in 30 deployment areas covering townlands in 23 counties.

Will I have the figure by next week?

Deputy McNamara anticipated what I was going to say and I may be able to be of some assistance to him. Many of my constituents, both businesses and people working from home, in the periphery of Limerick city, in places like Castletroy, Castleconnell, Drombanna and Ballyneety, have been seriously discommoded by the lack of a fast broadband service. I did some research on it and have been informed that National Broadband Ireland, the company commissioned to do this work, has been operating for almost two years. It has received €133 million in Exchequer funds and so far it has only directly connected 2,700 houses to high-speed broadband. The commitment it gave was that at the end of next January, it would have 115,000 houses passed for that purpose. That was reduced to 60,000 because of Covid. According to the information available to me, the number at present is approximately 17,000. My question to the Taoiseach is: what does the Government propose to do to expedite this process? At this rate of progress it will 100 years before broadband is extended to the rest of the country.

Approximately €225 million was allocated in budget 2022 for the roll-out of the national broadband plan. That is a massive investment in the regions and will address connectivity issues faced by rural Ireland. Some 260 direct employees and 815 indirect employees are working with build-design contractors on foot of that investment. Broadband connection points are a key element of the national broadband plan providing high-speed broadband in every county in advance of the roll-out of the fibre to the home network. As of 29 October, 388 broadband connection points in total have been installed by the National Broadband Ireland and 227 of the publicly available sites are now connected with high-speed broadband services through a service provider contractor with Vodafone. As part of this, broadband connection points are also being provided to primary schools. To date, 141 schools have been installed, out of a total of 388 broadband connection point sites installed, with high-speed broadband for educational access.

Thank you, Taoiseach. The time is up.

I just want to say the-----

No. The time is up.

I will come back to the Deputies with more detail on that.