Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is hard when asked a question to not be allowed to answer it. However, if the Chairman were building a house in a rural area in his constituency, he will go to the local builder to get a price from him. The Chairman will then go to a second builder and seek another price for it. Independent of that, he will also be sounding out the price of materials and so forth. We have carried out that process. We have a good idea, independent of any bid that is made, of the potential cost of building out this network. We have two strong bids from two separate bidders, with international connections involved. In fact, a filing cabinet landed at the door of my office yesterday with one of those bids. The other one was of similar size. We are in a very competitive process on this. It would have been nice to have received a third filing cabinet, but it was not critical to the process that we would receive it. In fact, it will help to speed up the process because we will go through two filing cabinets rather than three. The electricity network is still available to either of the bidders should they require it down the road. However, the two bidders in the process are using the existing regulated telecommunications network that is available. That is the choice they have made.