Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

My support for the Department is based on previous experience with the national broadband scheme which we introduced. It had similar characteristics in that we ended up with a single bidder. The speeds were not the same - we had 3 Mbps - and the design and contract arrangements were done in two years, after which we delivered very quickly. One of the differences, however, is that we were dealing with Hutchison Whampoa, one of the biggest private utility infrastructure companies in the world which owned massive assets everywhere. I have nothing against Mr. McCourt and I met him when I was Minister. He was involved in a speculative, high-tech satellite project. SSE, Laing, Enet, Eir, Vodafone and the ESB pulled out to leave Granahan McCourt, but there is no comparison between Hutchison Whampoa and Granahan McCourt in terms of scale or expertise. Mr. Ó hÓbáin said there had been various qualification processes for bidders, but was one done at the final stage, when all the other bidders had left? As Deputy Dooley said, all Granahan McCourt is providing is the working capital and that is not even upfront but is a contingency cost in case its costs go over what is projected. It is actually providing nothing but a letter from a bank to say the working capital will be provided if projections are met. We are dealing with a developer who does not have any of the experience of SSE, Vodafone, Laing or even Enet. Did the Department have a final check at any stage in this process to determine whether it was dealing with a substantial company that could bring the necessary international, industrial utility scale to the project?

When was the final qualification in respect of the bidder process? When was the scale of the bidder in the context of adding value most recently assessed?