Mr. Mark Griffin:

Yes. I sent a reply which the committee would not have received yet as the letter was only sent yesterday evening. In it we included a note on the ESB project. The Chairman is talking about a project that would have been entered into by the Minister for Public Enterprise - a precursor to our Department - and ESB International going back to 2001. The rationale for the project was to provide a nationwide broadband network. The ESB applied for and received approval to roll out fibre communications infrastructure using the existing overhead voltage network. The cost was €48 million and that attracted a grant of €16.6 million.