Mr. Mark Griffin:

The only circumstances under which the State can intervene is where there is a market failure - when there is no commercial entity prepared to deliver. Eir came forward with a proposition to cover another 300,000 premises itself. Those 300,000 premises would have effectively been withdrawn from the map. Under state aid rules, as there was a binding agreement in place - and we stitched in, very clearly, a specific set of requirements for Eir to meet in terms of the roll-out time, delivery, the number of premises and so on - we had no entitlement to keep the 300,000 on the map. We had absolutely no basis to maintain the number of premises at 800,000 plus. It is unfortunate that Eir walked away after that, because we would have much preferred to have competitive tension in the process right the way through. I outlined Eir's motivations for withdrawing from the process earlier, but that is where we are. Under EU state aid rules, there was no choice available to us.