Accepting Eir’s offer to deliver the National Broadband Plan at a cut price would be illegal, top officials in the Department of Communications have claimed.

The National Broadband Plan has been thrown into fresh confusion after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the Government will consider Eir’s claim it could deliver it for less than €1bn.

The Taoiseach has indicated that the Government could restart the National Broadband Plan (NBP) tender process after Eir claimed they could deliver the high speed network for one third of the current price.

Former Minister for Communications Denis Naughten has expressed surprise at claims by Eir that it could complete the National Broadband Plan for less than €1bn.

The former state telephone company, Eir, will today claim it could have delivered the Government's National Broadband Plan (NBP) for under €1bn, one-third of its estimated final cost.

Not so very long ago any suggestion that all our governments, led by whichever half of the duopoly that has always run this state, are too close to business would have been dismissed with a shrug.

Opposition calls to take Eircom back into state ownership to run the National Broadband Plan could cost up to €9bn, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

The €3bn State investment in the controversial National Broadband Plan has been labelled “the worst deal ever seen” after it emerged that the private operator chosen to deliver it will only invest €200m equity in it.

So that’s Sunday nearly wrapped up. Here’s some of the stories we published on irishexaminer.com today which we hope will help you make sense of it all this evening.

It’ll be beamed back to us much more efficiently than it can be transmitted via underground cables, writes Niall Smith.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said the National Development Plan is now "in shreds" and Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe can no longer say he will find the extra money for spiralling costs of rural broadband, the national children's hospital and the proposed metro in Dublin.

The Communications Minister has also refused to say how much of the €5bn broadband rollout cost will be footed by rural homeowners and businesses.

Consortium set to pay just €974m of total broadband cost

Why is the Government taking such a risk on its €3bn Broadband Plan when top officials have advised against it, asks Political Editor Daniel McConnell.

Communications Minister Richard Bruton has refused to say how much money a private firm will have to invest in the rollout of broadband despite pressure from opposition parties.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has accepted the €3 billion National Broadband Plan is an “unprecedented risk,” but insisted it is a risk worth taking.

We have been waiting seven years for it and will be waiting at least seven more for it to be finished.

The Taoiseach has ruled out using the ESB to deliver rural broadband claiming it would be "a bit much to ask".

Fianna Fáil have sought a meeting with the Government to seek an explanation on the rising cost of the National Broadband Plan.

The Government must publish all advice on the controversial National Broadband Plan (NBP), Fianna Fáil have demanded.

The Government has yet to decide whether it will go ahead with the roll-out of the controversial National Broadband Plan (NBP), the finance minister Paschal Donohoe has confirmed.

Communications Minister Richard Bruton is to meet with Eir and Imagine to discuss how recent announcements of respective plans to expand their networks will impact on the National Broadband Plan.

THE government is being encouraged to abandon or at least limit in scope its National Broadband Plan for rural Ireland. Imagine Communications, the wireless broadband provider, is promising to provide up to half a million users with high-speed broadband via a roof aerial by building hundreds of masts in rural areas.

Eir has defended its roll-out of high-speed rural broadband despite fewer than one in five homes and premises covered by the service actually connecting up to it.

How did this all come about?

JUST how long can this farce continue? This is a Government struggling for life and no longer able to guarantee the passage of its legislation.

Last February, Denis Naughten, the Minister for Communications, told an Oireachtas committee that the last bidder

The Government must proceed “without delay” on the National Broadband Plan (NBP), according to business group Ibec, as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he expects the contract to be signed “this autumn”.

The contracts for the National Broadband Plan (NBP) will be signed by September and the Government will spend €400m to get 100% coverage nationally, Tánaiste Simon Coveney has said.

Here's your morning news bulletin...

Residents of Sherkin Island off the Cork coast have been without a landline phone service since Storm Ophelia — and have now been rebuffed after calling on the Government to consider laying broadband cable instead.

The challenges facing the faltering national broadband plan (NBP) have been exacerbated by a report highlighting how costs in Ireland are among the highest in the EU despite much poorer speeds.

Ireland’s national broadband plan is as vital to the country “as electricity in the 1940s and the telephone in the 1970s” and needs to be finalised urgently, it has been claimed.

As if the looming knock-and-drag over refuse charges was not more than enough for Minister for Communications and the Environment Denis Naughten to deal with, he must now brace himself for an inevitable barrage of criticism over the latest delay in the National Broadband Plan (NBP) which he announced yesterday.

The cost of rolling out broadband across the State could cost the Government well over €1bn — considerably more than currently anticipated, an expert has claimed.

Broadband provider SIRO is to invest €40m in the rollout of high-speed broadband to six more towns in the coming months.

Tens of thousands of consumers could be left in the lurch without their existing internet services during the rollout of the National Broadband Plan, the Government has been warned.

Fianna Fáil has called on the government to put aside an inter-departmental “turf war” and clarify which department has ultimate responsibility for the National Broadband Plan after recent comments added to confusion over the issue.

Eir is willing to sign a binding commitment to deliver high-speed fibre broadband to 300,000 homes and businesses at the centre of a year-long tug-of-war between it and the government.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s decision to grant responsibility for the roll-out of “rural broadband” to the newly created Department of Regional Development, Rural Affairs, Arts, and the Gaeltacht looks to have created considerable inter-departmental confusion over the delivery of the National Broadband Plan (NBP).