Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is confidential information. This is a procurement process in a sector in which different companies are competing. They have a right to protect their information. If we suppose that plan A fails and we are not able to provide contracts, we may have to go back to those alternatives. We should not have estimates for those alternatives in the public domain, as they may undermine the capacity of those alternative operators to negotiate with subcontractors since those subcontractors will have seen the costs. A level of confidentiality must be provided while a contract is a live event. This will still have to be negotiated with subcontractors and there are deals to be agreed. If a whole lot of information about what it would cost for a subcontractor to lay fibre to a given place and about the different cost elements involved is put out, the hands of both this contractor and other contractors are exposed. It is not the sort of information that one puts into the public domain when one is still seeking to sign up subcontractors and different partners in the roll-out of this scheme.