Mr. Mark Griffin:

When SIRO withdrew, it was still very supportive of the Government's ambition. However, it could not develop a competitive business case to justify continued participation in the national broadband plan. I cannot say whether that was related to the 300,000 homes and businesses or other things. Eir withdrew in January 2017. It raised issues around the complexity of the procurement process for which I make no apologies because when we are talking about the State providing a very substantial subsidy, we must make sure our procurement process is robust and the things we are asking commercial companies to do stand up in terms of the obligation we are imposing on them over a 25-year period. Eir indicated at the time that it would continue to support the national broadband plan. We are seeing this in practice in terms of the engagement with the final bidder in terms of the make ready programme. The question that arises for us in developing a recommendation one way or the other for the Minister and Government is whether it has the technical capacity, whether the business plan stands up, whether it is commercial and whether the bidder will live up to all the contractual obligations that will be imposed.

Regarding competitive tension, it is probably worth mentioning that part of the competitive dialogue process is what it is called the ISDA S phase, which is the invitation to submit detailed submissions. At that point, we had received two submissions - one from Eir and one from the Granahan McCourt consortium - so we had both of those to benchmark as part of the assessment of value for money. We must then do a full detailed assessment of value for money. Many of the costs are regulated such as Eir duct and pole rentals.