Mr. Gerry Fahy:

We are very pleased to be here today to meet the committee and give an account of our functions. I am joined by my colleagues, Mr. Jeremy Godfrey, commissioner, and Mr. Kevin O'Brien, commissioner. We will be going through the presentation jointly. I will give the overview and will then hand over Mr. Godfrey to talk about our strategy while Mr. O'Brien will talk about the projects that flow from our strategy. I will then talk about the issue of roaming, which I know is of interest to the committee, and will then cover the highlights of our issues for the last 12 months. I will close on that point.

ComReg was established by an Act of the Oireachtas in December 2002. It followed on from the ODTR, the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation, which preceded it. ComReg has three commissioners, who are here today. We are supported by a highly skilled multidisciplinary staff, including economists, engineers, accountants and lawyers, among others. We regulate under Irish and EU law and our key responsibilities are: promoting competition and consumer choice; upholding consumer rights; facilitating marketing development, innovation and efficient use of spectrum; and ensuring the maintenance of the universal service in both telecoms and post. We have other miscellaneous responsibilities, including emergency call-answering services, domain registry and premium rate services regulation, among a number of other services which are too long to list here.

That is just an overview of what ComReg is and what it does. At this point I will hand over to my colleague, Mr. Godfrey, to talk about the market today and the strategy that we have evolved.