At the moment 61% of homes in the country have access to high-speed broadband, the Minister for Communications, Denis Naughten has said.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio on Thursday, Minister Naughten said that that figure is up from 52% when he became minister 14 months ago.

“Within the next 68 weeks we will see 77% of premises with access to high-speed broadband.

“We expect that to increase to nine out of 10 premises by 2020.”

Minister Naughten said that connecting the last number of homes are going to be more complex and more difficult.

If you have an isolated home on the side of a mountain yes it is going to be more challenging to provide them with high-speed broadband.

“We were the first country in the world to provide electricity to every single premises and we will be the first country in the world to provide high-speed broadband to every single premises in the country.

“Rural Ireland is getting broadband as we speak and that will continue until every single home in this country and business has access to high-speed broadband.”

National Broadband Plan

Minister Naughten said that there are two aspects to the National Broadband Plan – the commercially-led investment and the State-led investment.

On the commercial-led investment he said that 1,000mb per second of high-speed broadband is passing two doors every minute, of every working day.

“About 300 farms a week are getting access to pure fibre broadband. That allows people potentially to look at 200 HD Netflix channels at the one time without any drop off in service.”

When asked for a date as to when the whole country would be connected to high-speed broadband, Minister Naughten couldn’t give one but said that connecting homes is ongoing.

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