Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On the cost-benefit analysis and the fact that an entire new network is being built, I expressed concerns on the day of the announcement about the fact that Eir was going to hive off 300,000 households and premises. That figure turned out to be 340,000 to 350,000, out of the 840,000 in the intervention area. I expressed concerns at that time that this would banjax the entire project because it was taking out the rich pickings and we were being left with the ones that were hardest to reach, which would be more costly and so on. We got confirmation, in respect of the concerns I had been expressing from the day of the press conference in March 2017, that this has happened.

An entire infrastructure must now be rolled out side by side in the areas that Eir has taken up, which are the richest pickings. It is where the houses are in clusters. The harder-to-reach houses are beyond them. As I said at the time, it has effectively doughnutted the residential areas and an infrastructure must now be built to get past that. The poles to get the rest of the way must be leased.

Do the witnesses have concerns about the fact the State and taxpayers are getting ready to hand over just short of €1 billion to another company? If this goes ahead in its current form, the board and corporate structure will be in National Broadband Ireland. That corporate structure will get a €0.9 billion subsidy from the taxpayer and will hand it to another private company for permission to hang cables on its poles. It cannot supply people within that area because Eir has a veto on it. That is what we were told yesterday by KPMG. The company will have to run the cables past all of the 340,000 houses and premises to get to the 490,000 that remain. We are told this is one of the main reasons for the cost escalation. Is PwC concerned about the fact we are doing all of this when the State and the public, that is us and the 4.7 million people outside this room who inhabit this part of the island, already own the infrastructure on which electricity is rolled out? That is already being used to carry broadband and telecommunication networks to parts of the country.