Mr. Marcus Matthews:

The Deputy is correct. Currently all regional ISPs have to deal with wholesale backhaul providers individually, which can be quite a difficult process. It can be incredibly time-consuming, which is a burden for small companies with working directors and so on. The main issue facing regional ISPs is the disparity in the costs of getting backhaul capacity. A massive dimension of the problem of Ireland's connectivity gap is the lack of backhaul capacity to sites from which regional ISPs connect their customers. The absence of regulated pricing is also a problem.