Mr. Gerry Fahy:

A number of questions were asked. I will answer some of them and pass on the rest to my colleagues.

The quickest question to answer is on the figure of €78 million. The initial payment is €60.5 million upfront. It forms part of ComReg's surplus and is immediately available for distribution back to the Department. It is not ring-fenced and is returned to the Exchequer. It is probably worth noting that in its 21-year existence ComReg has effectively generated a surplus return to the Exchequer of over €1 billion.

With regard to coverage in rural areas such as Cavan and other areas with undulating and mountainous terrain, there are undoubtedly black spots. Planning permission is a key issue. Some of the locations are beauty spots. One of the work streams of the Government task force which is engaging with the mobile operators and local authorities involves looking for ways to smooth the path for base stations in areas where there are known black spots and great difficulties in obtaining planning permission. The mobile operators, ComReg and the local communities have a joint interest in solving these problems. There is positive intent generally, but the planning issues can be problematic, particularly in beauty spots. In a sense, it is a society challenge. What is ComReg doing about it? Reference was made to the current spectrum award and the Senator asked how it would help. The spectrum is being trialled and used for high-speed rural broadband provision. One operator offers a wireless service of 70 Mbps on the spectrum. Now that it has secured a long licence, it will be able to deploy the service more widely. Three of the operators that have won spectrum are mobile operators. They have thousands of base stations all over the country, each one of which can be used to deploy the spectrum for either mobile or fixed broadband services. There is significant potential which competition will drive.