Ms Carolan Lennon:

It does not require it. However, our 300,000 network is what we call a passive product, and a successful bidder could use the spare fibres and connections we built in when we were building that, but the remaining bidder has decided not to do that, and to build through the 300,000 instead. That decision could be revisited, and they could decide to use that passive product, which would save some time because they would not have to build through the 300,000. However, I never felt a three-year build time for the NBP was realistic. To give an example, we are just now finishing our 340,000, which took us three years. While the NBP is not triple that, the reality is that one needs three times the amount of fibre for the intervention area we had to do, so if we multiply that it could take it up to nine years. It will not take that long because it will get some more synergies, but between five and seven years is realistic. The majority would be done in five years, but the tails and the hard-to-reach places would bring it up to seven.