Mr. Donal Leavy:

I will clarify one or two points on the cost. First, as long as Eir remains in situin these areas and is sharing these poles with the NBP company the current rule is quite simple - we split the cost 50-50. Instead of being €20 per annum, it will be €10 per annum. That is one observation. It is quite possible over time that Eir's legacy copper network will be technically inferior to a fibre-to-the-home network. As a result, I do not know how long Eir will remain in situin terms of it providing services. Ultimately, somebody has to pay for those poles because there will be a reinvestment rate. From experience of Eir's footprint in respect of the 300,000 premises, we know that quite a number of poles had to be replaced. They have to be paid for by somebody. It is inescapable that there must be some charge. I will not speculate too much now on how that is to be calculated because we will possibly make proposals on that later this year and I do not want to say anything that would pre-empt what we might do. In principle, there is a cost. There is a cost in installing, maintaining and replacing poles. There are some operating costs and so forth. If Eir is incurring these costs and this is done incurred efficiently, by law it is entitled to some compensation. There is no way around that.

We are examining this matter. As Mr. Mourik stated, we are looking at what the price of the poles should be in the intervention area. Should it be the same as the standard €20 mentioned, divided by two into €10 or are there reasons it would vary? Are there operational efficiencies one could achieve because the scale is so large? Are there procurement efficiencies? On the other hand, will the reinvestment rate into new poles be different from that which Eir has been employing up to now? All these things work in various directions so it is hard to speculate how it will land.