The Government's commitment to bring high speed broadband to every house in the country by the end of 2020 looks to be in doubt as a result of a delay in the procurement process.
The Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources has confirmed that it will not now be in a position to award the contract to the winning bidder or bidders until 2017.
That will be at least several months later than planned, although a spokesperson for the department said it does not believe that this will impact the anticipated construction time.
The setback comes just two months after the General Election campaign, during which Labour and Fine Gael reaffirmed their commitment to delivering on the promise of bringing high speed broadband to every home and business in the country by 2020.
The news will be met with disappointment among rural dwellers, many of whom are still without a basic reliable broadband service.
The latest National Broadband Plan involves awarding contracts to commercial operators to build a network, with a minimum download speed of 30Mbps, to 757,000 premises occupied by 1.8 million people or 38% of the population which private companies are unlikely to ever serve because it would be too costly to do so.
After formally launching the procurement process at the end of last year, the department, led by Minister for Communications Alex White, had pledged to conclude procurement by the middle of this year, with construction beginning soon afterwards.
Minister White had consistently stated that by 2018 85% of premises would have access with 100% brought online by the end of 2020.
The department said five responses to the pre-qualification phase of procurement were received by the 31 March deadline, and these are now being assessed to decide which should proceed to the next stage.
It will involve an "Invitation to Participate in Dialogue" - but this is not now scheduled to take place until the summer.
As a result the department said it does not now expect to be able to award a contract until next year.
"Based on our extensive procurement planning, the granting of an earlier industry request for an extension to the PQQ submission deadline and the number of responses received, it is now envisaged that the Department will not be in a position to award a contract until 2017," it said in a statement to RTÉ News.
"Building the network in the intervention area remains a priority and we are seeking the fastest possible deployment."
The department said it will engage with the winning bidder or bidders on the optimum rollout strategy, and on the sequencing of the network deployment "to maximise efficiencies during network build".
It said engagement with industry so far has indicated that rollout could be achieved within three to five years of the date of the contract award, meaning the process will be completed sometime between 2020 and 2022, up to two years later than hoped.
