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

I want to try to answer the questions as comprehensively as I can. If I miss one please let me know. Several questions have been asked about plan B. In all procurement processes, particularly where there are services to be rolled out over a prolonged period, all viable options for delivery are considered. The current procurement process for the roll-out of the national broadband plan, NBP, in the State intervention area has been a very robust process with strong risk management throughout, with all scenarios and eventualities having been considered. The process is entering its final stages, with the remaining bidding consortium having reaffirmed its commitment to a successful conclusion of that process. It would be imprudent to pre-empt the outcome of the current discussions and potentially prejudice it by publicly deliberating on other options for alternative delivery mechanisms at this time. That was a note given to me on that subject for obvious reasons.

Deputy Dooley asked me whether enet has the experience. As I have said consistently throughout this process, what we are doing to bring high-speed broadband to isolated rural communities has never been done anywhere in the world. Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the internet came to this city last July and said we were the global leaders in this respect and that were we to succeed, we would be setting the global benchmark for delivering high-speed broadband in rural areas. Since we have started this process, the state of New York in the United States of America, has decided to go down a similar road. Recently, the Scottish Parliament and Government decided to do the same and yesterday there was public coverage of the German Government's decision to go down this road. That is why this is a test bed. We are the first to do it. I gave the example of 4site, which has used the challenges it faced with SIRO in building out the fibre network. No one else has built out a fibre network to the home. We are the first to do this on a large scale. It has been done in some cities, in patches of areas. That is why 4site is expanding and winning contracts on a global scale and that is why enet believes there is a huge opportunity here. It has experience. SSE owns 15,000 km of fibre and manages 16 data centres in the United Kingdom. Granahan McCourt is involved in several electricity companies and has used electricity infrastructure to provide fibre in certain parts of the United States as well. Enet manages much of the publicly-owned fibre in this country.

That brings me to Deputy Stanley's question about the backhaul map because this is something about which I know an awful lot. I was very much involved in having that map developed in the first place. There had been a bizarre situation in this country whereby the ESB, Bord Gáis at the time, the metropolitan area networks, MANs, and the Irish Rail network each had fibre networks, independently controlled by semi-State companies, but all ultimately owned by the taxpayer. I have definitely been raising this issue for at least 15 years on the floor of the House if not longer - including during Deputy Eamon Ryan's time in the Department - and have been stating that we should bring all those State-owned fibre networks under the control of one semi-State agency. It did not happen. Enet has done that, except for the ESB network. It is my intention to have an overall holding company to have all that fibre and to manage the day-to-day running of the NBP once the contracts are signed. Legislation is promised in this area.

Deputy Stanley spoke about an auction. It is not an auction. It is a competitive dialogue procurement process.