Mr. Mark Griffin:

I can speak firstly about the procurement process. We have marshalled an expert team, some of whom the committee has seen today, some who have spoken and some who have not. We have also been supported by expert advisers like KPMG and PwC who are well known in corporate finance. Analysys Mason is probably one of the best known international telecommunication companies when it comes to its understanding of the technology.

We worked very closely with ComReg on aspects of the national broadband plan and received a great deal of useful advice from it. The teams we have in place from the external expert advisers are Mason Hayes & Curran's legal advice. The teams we have in place from the external legal advisers are highly competent, available to us as needed and working with us in large numbers, in many cases on site in the Department. Mr. Mulligan has any numbers of experience in telecoms companies, while Mr. Neary has worked in telecoms companies in the private sector. We have a lot of experience which has stood to us extremely well in the procurement process to date. The big challenge for us, and we are extremely conscious of this, is how we equip the organisation to face off, which may or may not be the wrong term, in a post-contract governance situation. We see as part of the next phase of the process, assuming that in the event that a positive decision is taken, that we will gear up immediately to ensure that we have the right commercial, financial, technical, corporate and management advice available to the Department. The programme for Government refers to the establishment, for want of a better term, of a telecommunications management agency, which would probably be a non-commercial body but with a commercial mandate. It would have the capacity to hire in people with the expertise that we need. It would be responsible for the administration and oversight of the national broadband plan, the metropolitan area networks, MANs, emergency call answer centre, and a range of other telecoms functions within the State system. In truth, the success or failure of this probably hinges on a lot of things but the biggest one is to ensure that we have the most robust governance available to us after the contract award and when people come in to report something to us, whether it is commercial, financial, technical or whatever it is, we have the right people who can face off against them, talk to them, negotiate with them and come up with a resolution on whatever issue that is to the best advantage of the State.