Better internet for Leitrim on the way

Leitrim County Council's Nicola McManus gave a presentation on National Broadband Ireland's seven year plan and revealed there is planned investment of  €46m across County Leitrim. 

She added that there are 11,469 premises in the intervention area accounting for 51.4% of premises in the county including homes, farms, commercial premises and schools.

Ms McManus said that in advance of the fibre to home rollout, the National Broadband Plan provided for the the delivery of Broadband connection points (BCPs) that have 150 megabits/second in rural locations in Leitrim including at Drumkeeran Enterprise Centre, Leitrim Gaels Community Facility, New Ballagh Centre, Rossinver, Aughawillan Community Centre, Aughavas GAA Park, Aughawillan GAA Club Room and Aghanlish Community.Center, Rossinver. 
"The idea is that in time, these BCPs will connect to the fibre," Ms McManus said. 

Two schools, Aughnawillian National School and St Michael's Primary School, Glenfarne, also received BCPs. 
"There is a schools connection facility within the NBI plan if anybody has schools that need a connection, we can put them forward for that," she said.

Separately, SIRO, a joint venture company between ESB and Vodafone, focused on delivering full fibre broadband to Ireland’s towns and cities, contacted the council in March with a view to rolling out fibre to the homes in Carrick-on-Shannon - a roll out will include over 1,800 homes and businesses in Carrick-on-Shannon. 
Homes and businesses can order SIRO’s fibre broadband from its network of retailers, including Vodafone, Airwire, Sky, Pure Telecom, Digiweb, Viatel, Blacknight, Fastcom and Telecom with speeds of up to two gigabits per second available for homes in the area, and up to 10 gigabits for enterprise connections.

Cllr Brendan Barry asked how fibre cables that are being erected as part of the rollout will be maintained. 

He said he noticed that a lot of the cables are "in and out through branches and bushes" and said he was concerned that they would fall into disrepair with Ms McManus saying that it would fall under the remit of Eir. 

Cllr Enda McGloin said that it was important that "infrastructure stays in place and we don't have continual fall out from that" and asked Ms McManus if she would query NBI in relation to who will maintain the cables. 

Darragh O'Boyle, district engineer with Leitrim County Council, said that he understood that the "infrastructural owner will have to maintain it".

Cllr Barry noted that Eir "was sold off for Eircom and now we have the State through NBI hiring back all that infrastructure and paying Eir for the use of all of these poles" adding that the "infrastructure has fallen into a very poor state over the last number of years. The danger is it will happen again."