Ms Carolan Lennon:

It is the invitation to submit detailed solutions, ISDS, submission, which is the technical submission we made. Mr. Moat wanted to flag those issues in advance of that submission, which he did. We then submitted the technical bid and we waited for the next version of the contract to come out, hoping that some of the commercial issues we had been highlighting had been addressed. A new version, comprising 1,400 pages, came out in January. While a few minor changes had been made, unfortunately, the commercial issues we had raised had been addressed. The next stage involved Eir submitting its commercial bid. In doing that, we had to confirm that we were accepting all of the commercial terms and conditions. We could not in good faith do that. Mr. Moat then sought a meeting with the former Minister, met him and told him that Eir was pulling out. The Minister expressed disappointment and asked him to have think about it. At the end of January, Mr. Moat wrote to the former Minister telling him that Eir would not be changing its mind. I saw some media coverage today, which suggested that the issue was the new shareholders. It had nothing to do with the new shareholders; they had not bought Eir until April. The old board made the decision. It was very close to this process because we were before it a lot explaining it to them. The view was taken that if in 18 months we had not achieved any changes we were unlikely in the month or so remaining before the final bid to get any changes that would enable us to accept the commercial terms and conditions. In the end, as we were not going to be able to secure any changes, we pulled out.