Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this opportunity to engage with the Minister and his officials. The revelation today that the equity investment from Granahan McCourt is a mere €175 million and the working capital, as matters move along and revenue is brought in, is €45 million will raise eyebrows not only in these Houses but among the public.

I want to deal with the issue of when the company can divest itself or flip this infrastructure. The contract synopsis states there are restrictions on the change of ownership that applied to the date of the agreement up to 12 months after the completion date of deployment. The Government expected this project to be completed within seven years, according to page 18 of the national broadband plan document. That effectively means that Granahan McCourt can sell this after 2028. The contract synopsis states also that the Minister cannot unreasonably stop the sale before completion. We have a contest on probably one of the most important aspects of this contract. For what reasons does the Minister believe he or his successor could stop the sale? While officials may pass him a note or he may say in reply that the State can have the opportunity to buy it back, will the State, in other words, taxpayers, be in a position to do it? Will taxpayers then be asked buy back a company and a network that they built up? The Minister might address that issue.

The figure mentioned on Clare FM was circa €200 million. We know now that a figure just shy of €200 million was the answer the Minister, Deputy Creed, got. The equity investment is €175 million.

The Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform raised concerns about the deal being frontloaded by the taxpayer. He raised questions with respect to years four and six and that while there are breaks for the State to review it, unfortunately, by that point €1.2 billion will have been invested and by year six, almost €2 billion or €1.95 billion or €1.96 billion will have been invested. The taxpayer will have done the heavy lifting and handed out the cash. By 2026, the taxpayer will have put in €2.2 billion while the company will be in a position to get its money back by 2028. We know how meagre its investment is. It would effectively be able to get into the game of trying to flip the company. We have seen how often Eir was flipped after the disastrous sale of it in 1999 by the Government of the day. What can this Government do to stop that?

I want to raise the issue of the contingency report shared with the Departments of the Taoiseach and Public Expenditure and Reform where it acknowledged that alternative options have not "undergone a project appraisal or any cost benefit analysis". I find that amazing. Since the Minister came into office, I have questioned him on this many times in the Chamber, and I also questioned his predecessor. This is a major concern Sinn Féin has had about this project from the start. We had many concerns but this is a major one. The fact that the tendering process was dodgy and shaky is an understatement. We were left in a situation where there was one remaining bidder. I told the Minister two years ago that if there is one bidder for any project, that one bidder holds all the cards. Anybody who has been to a fair, a mart or an auction or who has bargained at a street stall will know that.

That is position, never mind this being a major Government contract. To use the Minister’s words, it is the biggest contract ever undertaken by the State. The Minister might directly address the following point. If teams of civil servants who were working on this project, the people the Minister charges, to whom taxpayers pay good money, to consult experts and to be the experts to come to the best decisions and come up with the best advice, acknowledged that alternative options have not undergone a project appraisal or a cost-benefit analysis, so it is not only Sinn Féin, I as my party representative, or somebody else who is saying this, will the Minister advise the reason that has not happened, particularly now that we are in this situation? I believe the Government would have known this ballpark figure. Anybody who has done any kind of a negotiation would know that several months ago, going back to last year, the ballpark figure of the financial input from the one investor, Granahan McCourt, would have been known by the officials and people involved with the tender. We had only one bidder remaining, there was no competition in the process, and the financial input and investment from that one remaining bidder is very small. Issues have been raised and we have concerns about the capacity of the one remaining bidder to deliver the project. I met people in Enet before this tender process commenced and the principal people there expressed to me on more than one occasion and also to my parliamentary assistant that their preferred option at that point was that the State would own the network. We deduced from that and when this was probed with them, even though we have not explicitly said it, that the company did not have the financial fire power to deliver this project on its own. Obviously, there would be State investment in it but that they had major concerns about the company's financial capacity and its capacity to roll it out. Their preferred option was for the main arteries of this network to be owned by the State. Will the Minister address that point?

The taxpayers' contingency fund of €500 million, which is not the total input, is roughly three times the equity being invested by Granahan McCourt in this project. It has been suggested this fund will be eaten up in compensation. I remind the Minister of the children's hospital contract, which shows that if anything is left open-ended, the private contractors involved in the project keep coming back to the Government. I remind the Minister once again there is no other show in town with this project for him, the State or the taxpayer. We have become prisoners of it because at that point there is no reverse gear to get out of it. The private operators are rolling out wireless broadband in every county and companies like Imagine and Eir, which is using its fibre, will be eating into the available customers. How will that be defended?

With respect to the Eir network being used, figures for the rent per pole were mentioned in recent months. These are poles of the Eir network which was sold off by a previous Government. The Minister might confirm how much per pole and how much per metre the ducting will cost. A figure being bandied about over the period of the contract is in the region of €900 million to €1 billion. Will the Minster confirm that?