The Chief Executive of National Broadband Ireland (NBI) has said that the company is preparing to pay "a couple hundred thousand euro" in fines relating to delays in the rollout of the National Broadband Plan.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One progamme, Peter Hendrick explained that the project was 12 months behind schedule, with eight-and-a-half of those months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
"In the first two years of the project there was no associated penalties. When we came into 2022, we recognised there was a 12-month delay," he said.
"Eight-and-a-half months of which were related to Covid, and the rest was related to some of the challenges that any construction project would have getting up and running. In 2022, we have made a provision [in our accounts] of a couple of hundred thousand euro" he added.
There are over 102,000 premises that are now able to be connected to the network.
However, despite the fines and delays, Mr Hendrick said he is confident that NBI can recover the lost time and finish the project on the originally scheduled time.
"We’re actually ahead now by six-to-eight weeks in terms of recovering, so when we go through the entire programme we believe we’ll bring the overall project – even with the delays of Covid – all back under the seven-year original plan," he said.
Despite only 25,000 premises having signed up to the network so far, Mr Hendrick said he thinks more people will transition to the network as their current broadband contracts come to an end.
"There are homes that are in a contract, where they’re connected with a broadband provider and their plan is transition at the end of their contract," he said.
"As the network is going nationwide, a lot of the retail operators who have customers in contract are actually migrating them to the fibre network because they want certainty of retaining those customers," he added.
Mr Hendrick highlighted that NBI are connecting up to 3,000 homes a month to the network and plans are in place to increase that number next year.
