Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

I will start. As I said at the outset, every piece of infrastructure that can be used will be used. Going back to the consortium and the State, as shareholders, we need to minimise the cost. The MANs are in Cork and in approximately 80 places across the country and where they represent the most efficient way to utilise the networks, they will be used. In some cases, it might be more efficient to use the electricity or Eircom network. All of those networks are in front of the consortium as options at the moment. What is being considered is what is the most cost-efficient way of doing it. The reason areas of the country have not served to date is because while those networks are there, it still costs a lot of money to bring them to the door of the house. While the electricity or any other network might be there, one still needs to get fibre on poles and through ducts and back to a point of presence in Cork, Wicklow, Dublin or wherever else. That is why an area has been designated as amber because it is not commercially feasible for anybody to spend their capital to get it from the house back to those points of presence. That is why we are doing this. That will happen as part of this process. We are reducing the amount of any overbuild here where possible but if something needs to be built, it will be built.

In terms of a public ownership model, the Government decided in July 2016 that we would use the commercial gap-funded model, which is a typical model used across member states whereby we offer a grant to the winning consortium. The fact that an Eircom network, the ESB network or a MANs network might be used as a subcontractor or rented will not make any difference to that ownership model because those networks are owned by the semi-State company, be it, for example, the ESB, or by Eircom or the MANs are owned by the county councils. Those ownership models are there across the board with the actual infrastructure already, some of which is in State ownership, for example, the ESB, public ownership for the MANs or private ownership such as Eircom and towers and masts are owned by Coillte, for example, a semi-State organisation which may be part of the solution. A multitude of infrastructure is involved in terms of the solution to deliver in the most cost-efficient way, whether it is predominantly fibre to the home or even fixed wireless or whatever other solution and those will all be leveraged to minimise the cost.

In Cork, there are potentially 74,000 unconnected premises. Every county in Ireland has that problem and that is why it is amber. Our target for Cork and other counties is that we address the problem as soon as possible through 2019 and onwards. The target now is to turn all of those areas blue. That is the ultimate objective here.