Mr. Mark Griffin:

If the Deputy looks at the map, he will see that effectively they were on spurs from roads from towns and villages and so on. Therefore, it is probably a reasonable description that they were the houses that were more commercially viable. A proposal was made to the Department by Eir to put the 300,000 households on the map, thus reducing the overall scale of the intervention area. We had extensive discussions with Eir on its commitment to do so and with the European Commission on the latitude available to the Government not to accept the 300,000 households as part of a separate deployment measure. The clear response we received from the European Commission was that under state aid rules, where there was a commitment agreement in place, with clear targets and deliverable outcomes and so on, the option was not available to the State to decline it.