Ms Michele Connolly:

There are three main payment streams under which payments are made to the bidder. These are deployment milestone payments, ongoing capital payments and connection payments. The entire intervention area has been segregated out into 110 different deployment areas, each of which is subject to a very specific regime of milestone payments. The Government subsidy is paid provided the private sector entity delivering the project reaches the appropriate milestones. The ongoing capital payments will continue over the life of the project, and relate to the continued upkeep of the asset. In addition, there are connection payments where, as a retail service provider decides to connect a house to the network, the private sector bidder is paid a sum of money for making the connection.