Mr. Michael Keogh:

All of those smaller transposers are depending on signals from the big sites. If the transposer serving the Ballymacarbry area is somewhere to the south of the village, it will be getting its signal from Mount Leinster. The small transposer gets the signal from Mount Leinster and repeats it. Therefore, the analogue signal for the whole country has to stay on, or the signal for the whole country has to go off. We cannot decide to leave the signal at an individual small site on for an extra few weeks. Technically, that is not possible.

I have said that there is no reason for a blank screen. I think I have covered the issue of costs. We have engineered a technical solution while avoiding getting involved in any conversations about things like whether County Cork should get more sites than County Kerry. We did all the main sites - all the big transposer sites - before doing a technical review to see how they were performing against what we had planned. Parts of County Cork were not performing, so an extra three or four sites were put in the county. An extra site was put in each of counties Donegal, Kerry, Louth and Tipperary because the system as planned was not working as we expected. Wireless signals do not recognise geographical or political borders. We are trying to deal with areas where there are coverage issues, rather than areas where there are political or county borders. We have had issues. County Waterford has been mentioned. Historically, we had an issue in a place called Kilmacomma. The only way we could possibly get a service into the area was by bringing it through Clonmel. Kilmacomma is in County Waterford, whereas Clonmel is in County Tipperary. It was a little difficult to get planning permission in County Tipperary for something that was going to help people in County Waterford.