Mr. Mark Griffin:

SIRO said that following a comprehensive review, it could not develop a competitive business case to justify continued participation in the national broadband plan bid process and therefore had decided to withdraw. That was the formal letter submitted to the Department at that point.

Eir withdrew in January 2017. At that stage, it was in the middle of a takeover process.

It said its decision to exit the NBP process was driven by a range of commercial, regulatory and governance issues. It referred to the complexity of the tender process. We make no apology for a complex tender process and document where there is so much State money to be invested. It had some other broader concerns about the regulatory and pricing regime that existed outside the NBP. We met with Eir on 23 January and asked it to reflect on its position. It wrote back to us again on 30 January setting that out. That is effectively the rationale that both of those entities put forward to us.