Company behind National Broadband Plan insists it will meet targets 

From left: Tara Collins, NBI chief marketing officer, Peter Hendrick, NBI chief executive and Samantha Ecock, Promethean territory manager, Ireland.

The company behind the €2.6bn National Broadband Plan insists that if it doesn’t meet its targets, the massive subsidies agreed for the plan will not be paid by the State.

Chief executive of National Broadband Ireland (NBI) Peter Hendrick will tell the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday that “NBI has not been and will not be paid by the State if it does not deliver these milestones”.

The company is to appear voluntarily — as it is not subject to audit by the State — before the PAC, followed by an appearance by its partner in the rollout, the Department of Communications.

Secretary-general of the Department of Communications Mark Griffin is expected to tell the committee the plan is set to meet its target date for full rollout by 2027 and insists the project will be delivered within the budget of €2.6bn.

The NBP has come in for a deal of criticism in recent months after it emerged just €2m of the €100m investment commitment from NBI is coming from the firm’s own money, with the rest sourced from high-interest loans.

The remaining €2.4bn investment is coming from the State.

Mr Griffin will tell the committee there is “significant pressure and incentive” on NBI to meet its targets — from February 1 of this year it faces financial sanctions if it fails to do so.

However, briefing notes provided to the PAC show the plan, which aims to connect 550,000 rural homes and businesses with high-quality broadband, is some distance from meeting even its end-2021 targets.

Just 34,500 homes had been passed for connection to the network at the end of January, more than 25,000 fewer than even the revised targets planned for the end of December.

Meanwhile, NBI has been accused of ‘love-bombing’ the PAC ahead of Thursday's hearing.

The company has made a number of approaches to the committee’s TDs, seeking to engage on the subject of the plan in recent times, including an invitation to committee chair Brian Stanley to attend its offices.

Separately, various committee members received a message informing them that senior NBI executives, including Mr Hendrick, will be in Buswell’s Hotel, adjacent to Leinster House, in advance of the hearing should the TDs wish to “drop by” in order to discuss any NBI issues “relating to your constituency that you might not wish to raise at the committee”.

The recipients of the invite were told to bring the Eircode of any property they might be enquiring about as to do so “is always useful”.

Mr Stanley acknowledged the NBI had been attempting to engage with the committee outside of its official hearings in recent times.

“We have been love-bombed. I personally received and declined on a number of occasions invitations to attend their offices,” Mr Stanley said, adding such a visit did not make sense to him.

“We, as a committee, are interested only in seeing the figures and data which show how the project is progressing,” he said.

NBI said it had extended the Buswell’s invite in order to satisfy some PAC members who had expressed “a wish to raise constituency-specific issues with the company on the margins of the meeting”.