Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Lennon for the presentation. We appreciate her being here.

Ms Lennon is principally here to give Eir's side of the story. As she will be aware, some of her customers, those who use Eir's wholesale services, were previously before the committee and they outlined for us their, as it were, gripes. Our role, as I see it anyway, is not to get involved in that level of detail - that is always understandable - but where it cascades out to our role is in terms of the value for money the citizen gets in terms of the service that is provided to him or her. Any impediment that is introduced that reduces competition forces the end price up for the user.

My concern follows on from that the Chair has identified. The representative body, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators, ALTO, was before us and set out clearly its concerns about the costs. There are some questions for Eir but there are also some questions for the regulatory regime. It is highly unlikely that Ms Lennon will be look for more regulation, which is an issue for us, but there is concern about the way Eir interfaces with the regulator. The Chairman has already asked those questions. I will not go back over those but I would be interested to hear Ms Lennon's response.

The Chairman has already talked about the size and scale of the connection charges, particularly in that area where Eir agreed with the Government that arrangement about the roll-out to 300,000, which is now 330,000. The Chairman identified the connection prices that Open Eir will charge its competitors to get on there and it seems to be out of kilter considerably with the way other markets deal with it. The knock-on effect of anything that limits the capacity of those companies to invest is that the least good service gets to the consumer at the end of the day at too high a price. Obviously, we want to try and get to the bottom of that. It is very much about price and encouraging competition. It is accepted now that it is highly unlikely that the arrangement Eir had with the Government, while presented as a commercially viable entity, would be commercially viable were it not for the fact that there will be a national broadband plan.

Eir spotted an opportunity and it invested the money, which is fantastic, but it will reap significant returns. Eir is working with Enet now. This might be news to them but a few hours ago, the Minster confirmed in the Dáil that Enet is no longer the bidder. Its partner, Granahan McCourt Capital, is one of the bidders while John Laing PLC has pulled out. There have been more developments in that sordid affair and we will see how that progresses. Regardless, it is fair to say that the arrangement that Eir reached with the Government to roll broadband out to 300,000 premises has taken out much of the competition. Eir decided to pull out of the national broadband plan and SIRO pulled out because it looked like Eir would have such coverage that no one else could see a financial return for themselves. That puts more pressure on the Open Eir part of the business to be open and transparent about how it does business so that we, on behalf of the people who put us here, can be assured that there is good, open competition. However, there cannot be because Eir has the infrastructure and, therefore, competition must be generated through the regulatory regime. We will listen to Eir's views on this. We may not take these views at face value, understanding the commercial realities that exist, but it is a concern. The less investment that other companies make, ultimately, the less the consumer will benefit.