Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Is it not the case that Granahan McCourt from the start had little or no standing of its own and relied on others? In the first instance, it relied on John Laing, SSE and Enet. All of those entities withdrew from the Granahan McCourt consortium. At some point a company called McCourt Global LLC was introduced or presented some letter of undertaking to get through a certain phase of the bid process.

We discovered recently, by virtue of an article in The Sunday Times by Justine McCarthy, that this entity was no longer participating and that another company, Tetrad, was effectively the piggy bank, as it were. In essence, we have Granahan McCourt Dublin (Ireland) Limited throughout the process, but it does not appear to have much standing and certainly is unable to cover for itself. Whenever I raise this with the Taoiseach or the Minister, I am informed that it complies with the procurement process and that the information memorandum that was produced. That brings me back to my question. If KPMG designed that procurement process, is it happy to stand over it when it considers the way in which the process has been jockeyed through by a company with little or no standing that has been able to substitute, somewhat like Lanigan's ball, by pulling people in and out at various stages just to get past the hurdles that were set to ensure we got a company with the reputation, capacity and capability to roll out high-speed broadband to the 542,000 homes and premises that are waiting for it, in addition to value for money?