Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to go back to the MANs. Ireland has one of the most expensive State-owned broadband networks in Europe. The Minister issued a press statement after the Analysys Mason report was produced. The headline issue identified in that statement was that there was a 50% reduction to €2.60 per metre. We saw the response from BT to some of the points in the Analysys Mason report. The Minister referred that issue of pricing to ComReg and it was an issue on which it had no responsibility previously. I subsequently met a number of providers that are wholesale entities, so to speak. I asked if the reduction was of benefit to them and they said they had got quotes after the announcement of the reduction and, lo and behold, those quotes contained increases, rather than reductions, in price. There is something fairly serious happening here because the end user will pay for this. I continue to be dissatisfied with the lack of transparency and whether there is a real effort to get to grips with price here because one of the determinants for the take-up of the service will be price. We need to look at what is happening with the MANs. The witnesses might comment on that to begin with.