Mr. Ciaran Moore:

One of the reasons we were asked to appear again before the committee is that in 2010, when the 116123 number was being assigned to the Samaritans, this committee invited ourselves and representatives of a number of other groups to a meeting to discuss how we could make this work. At that stage there was no relationship in place and there was no partnership. In part, it was from those contacts that this relationship was put in place, so this is something of a report back to the committee.

Obviously, as Mr. Galvin said, there is a wide range of other organisations supported by the telecoms industry. We would propose that the Samaritans are somewhat different, because of the nature of the 116123 number. A very small number of such numbers are common across Europe. As this was assigned to the Samaritans, it was a significant responsibility that we had to undertake, because it would be much higher profile than anything we had done previously. Associated with that there were costs and other types of investments we had to make, so there is a qualitative difference between the delivery of the 116123 number and some of the other 1800 and other services. That was facilitated by this committee in 2010.