Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Chairman said, the Bill is a relatively short legislative proposal, the purpose of which is to provide an explicit legal basis to enable the ESB to engage now or in the future in the installation and operation of electronic communications networks and services either alone or by agreement with one or more other companies and to provide for consequential matters.

The amendment proposed by Deputy Colreavy in essence involves the inclusion of an additional subsection in section 2. This new subsection would place very specific obligations on the ESB in terms of employment and employee profiles. The proposed amendment, if adopted, would appear, whether intentional or otherwise, to restrict the ESB in its operations in a number of other ways. The ESB would be required to conclude any access agreements only with third parties or companies which meet the prescribed employee profiles set out in the amendment. In terms of employees within the supply chain, it would appear the ESB could be restricted to concluding any procurement contracts for products or services to companies which meet the employee profile set out in the Deputy's proposed amendment.

As the Deputy is aware, the ESB is a commercial State company and is required to operate to a commercial mandate. This amendment could impact on the ESB's ability to meet its objectives in this regard. I understand the rationale behind the Deputy's proposed amendment but I hope he will appreciate that, for the reasons outlined, it would not be appropriate to include such specific obligations in primary legislation. In addition, the amendment would confer specific obligations on one operator in the telecommunications market and not on another. This would not be appropriate given the fully liberalised nature of the telecommunications market. For those reasons I regret that I cannot accept the amendment.

On the Deputy's point regarding the inclusion of the word "selling" in section 2(b), the paragraph states "leasing, licensing, selling and otherwise providing, making use of and engaging in any service in connection with electronic communications networks and electronic communications services infrastructure". Although the proposal is to engage in the wholesale market, it will nevertheless be selling in that market, and for that reason it would not be able to discharge the intention of being the wholesaler if it were precluded from selling. That is the reason "selling" is expressly averted to.