Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to make two generalities before I ask a couple of questions. First, I thank the Minister for his briefings and the painstaking effort he is making to clarify this issue. That merits acknowledgement. Second, there is not a more important infrastructural project in the country. Nobody here needs to be reminded that for many people it is of extraordinary seriousness.

There are three fundamental questions about which people are concerned. They want to know if they will get broadband, when they will get it, and if it will break the taxpayers because of what happened. Those are the fundamental questions, and everything else is a subset of those questions. I ask those three questions of the Minister but also by what process is he confident that SSE-enet are tied into a pricing structure? They have stated a pricing structure, and I sincerely hope it is correct. The Minister says they will be tied in because of what they put in at procurement stage and that that must hold. How does he propose to secure that? How does he propose to ensure that SSE-enet maintain their social mandate and go out immediately to the less commercially profitable areas? Will we have a control over that process? Will the Minister go through his projected timeframe again because that is the one aspect people want to know about, as well as the running cost? If we were to have a hierarchy of concern the first concern is that people get broadband. Will the Minister deal again with the timeframe? Is he confident about it, and why?