You can set the repositories you want to use in your settings.xml, or in your POM.
If you have a team working on the project, you might want to put this in the POM so everybody has the conf.
You can do it like :
<repositories>
<repository>
<id>Maven Central</id>
<url>http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/</url>
<snapshots>
<enabled>false</enabled>
</snapshots>
</repository>
.... other repos
</repositories>