Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 5 June 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment

National Broadband Plan: Discussion

Mr. Robert Mourik:

Let me set it out in a very high level and then if Mr. Leavy wants to fill in some detail he can do so. By law, and this is regulated at a European level, we can open up infrastructure and regulate certain parts of what, in the end, is an asset of a privately-held company but that privately-held company should be reimbursed for that fact. They have costs and they maintain the poles, which are an asset that is on their books. What we do, as an independent regulator, by law we have to figure out what are the efficiently incurred costs. We cannot force Eircom to give something away for free. That is not how it works. What we, as a regulator do, is figure out what the price is in order that Eircom gets reimbursed but is not reimbursed more than what is really due to it. We try to strike a balance.

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