Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 14 February 2019

Public Accounts Committee

2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Communications, Climate Action and Environment
Broadband Service Provision: Discussion
BT Ireland

9:00 am

Mr. John O'Dwyer:

There is one slight difference there, if I may. My colleague is completely correct that the Department issued the concession agreement and the contract to run it, and the company running the MANs has to comply with that contract. However, there is an extra piece to this. This is a state aid and, in 2005 or 2006, the European Commission issued a state aid approval for this project. There was some debate at the time as to whether it was the correct sort of investment for state aid. The European Commission issued a document, which is quite easy to obtain via Google, providing a set of conditions for that state aid. In the concession agreement and the operation of the MANs, in my opinion, they have to comply with those conditions set as part of the state aid approval. That is where the non-discrimination is coming through from. It is the European Commission state aid approval that states that it must be open and transparent and that it must not be an operator. All these conditions came from the European Commission.

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