A new “interim” grant to cover broadband for those set to wait years for the National Broadband Rollout should be considered, TDs and Senators at an Oireachtas Committee have said.

This could take the form of satellite or wireless broadband, using systems such as Elon Musk’s new low-orbit Starlink system, the committee heard.

Committee chairperson Fine Gael TD Kieran O’Donnell, said that the proposals will be raised with Communications Minister Eamon Ryan. Fianna Fail Senator Timmy Dooley said that a new “intervention” on behalf of the state should now be considered.

“There are several ways the government could assist here to provide many end users with a modern satellite broadband service for a modest cost on a temporary basis,” said Digiweb managing director, Declan Campbell, addressing the Committee.

“Some homes and businesses within the intervention areas are not going to be passed with fibre broadband for several years to come.”

Due to Covid delays, the National Broadband Plan rollout is months behind schedule, with only half of the scheduled first 115,000 homes due to be ‘passed’ this year. The €2.1bn plan is due to have 540,000 homes covered by 2026.

The German government has announced that it will offer subsidy vouchers to citizens in rural areas that cannot gain access to high speed fibre. The scheme will be worth up to €500 to cover the setup costs of the satellite broadband. It will not cover the monthly broadband fees thereafter.

Satellite broadband services typically suffer from poor ‘latency’ or delaying effects, rendering them poor choices for services such as Zoom. However, newer services such as Starlink use satellites in lower orbit, meaning that the ‘latency’ problem isn’t as much of an issue. Starlink is a relatively expensive broadband service, costing €500 for the dish and €100 per month in service fees.

The scope for a new state intervention comes as the European Commission recently reiterated that it wants all EU states to adopt a minimum broadband speed of 100Mbs, which is over three times what the Irish government counts as ‘high speed broadband’.

“All Member States are encouraged to endorse their targets and adapt their national broadband strategies to the new targets,” according to the Commission’s broadband policy document.

At present, households that can receive a 30 megabits per second (Mbs) broadband service do not qualify for inclusion in the NBP.

This 30Mbs cutoff line is based on previous EU guidance about what constitutes ‘high speed’.

However, the EU is now revising that minimum target up to 100Mbs, with 30Mbs no longer deemed adequate for modern requirements.

The most recent Eurobarometer survey says that Irish people are most keen to work from home but are being stymied by huge gaps in rural broadband availability.

43pc of rural Irish residents say that broadband is still a problem in their area, compared to just 26pc across the EU.

Ireland sits close to the top of EU countries who say that “digital infrastructure” still needs to be addressed.

This is in spite of Irish people being the most gung-ho across the continent about working from home, with 33pc telling the Eurobarometer survey that they are “much more likely” to work from home “at least some of the time” when the pandemic ends. This is a higher figure than any other EU country polled in the survey.

A recent Comreg survey showed that 13pc of Irish home broadband connections aren’t adequate for home working. The situation is particularly bad for those with mobile broadband services, where one in four say the connection isn’t good enough to use for home working.

The government recently admitted that homes not currently eligible to receive the existing National Broadband Plan may yet qualify for taxpayer funding in future.

There are estimated to be up to 100,000 homes in Ireland stuck in this mediocre broadband limbo, not covered by fibre rollouts from Eir or Siro but also not deemed terrible enough to qualify for the National Broadband Plan.

Commercial broadband operators such as Eir, Siro and Virgin say that they plan to upgrade more ‘in-fill’ premises that are currently not in the National Broadband Plan’s intervention area because they are deemed to receive a service of over 30Mbs. However, executives estimate that there will may be up to 100,000 households caught between 30Mbs and 100Mbs.

Last December, the head of National Broadband Ireland, Peter Hendrick, said that the Ireland’s state-subsidised rural rollout company would consider tendering if a second National Broadband Plan came about in 2025.

“If there was another tender, certainly it's something we could look at,” Peter Hendrick told the Irish Independent at the time.

“Under the European Commission’s digital agenda, there's going to be another assessment between now and 2025. By 2025, [the government] and other European governments have to have given another commitment for 100 megabits per second, or else there possibly needs to be another intervention.”