Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

In Ireland today there are Virgin Media, SIRO and Eir. They are the main builders of fibre connections to homes. SIRO, Eir and all other operators provide the information for the regulator. We have the Eir information. What we have seen, without giving the committee exact numbers, is that uptake has been very good and it is getting stronger and bigger every month. Why it was slow in the initial year - 2017 - was that Eir Retail, the retail arm of Eir - it is Eir Wholesale that is building the network - was the only one selling it. Eventually Eir Wholesale started to bring in Sky and Vodafone. The Deputy might have noticed lately that there is an ad featuring Dermot Bannon on RTÉ for high-speed fibre broadband. The number of people looking for high-speed broadband has grown substantially since.