Ms Carolan Lennon:

The proposal absolutely includes connection to the home. It is exactly the same model as used for the other 300,000, which also connects to the home. We were looking at the numbers today. Our rule for connections is that we will only do overhead connection. We will not dig underground ducts for people. If people want underground rather than overhead, they have to dig the duct themselves. If they have an underground duct which is blocked, we will not unblock it. If a duct is fine we have no problem pulling fibre through it, but it if is blocked we will ask the owner to unblock it. Applying those rules to the intervention footprint, we can connect all homes for less than €1 billion. We were checking the number of people who have refused a connection or refused to put in ducting or to unblock existing ducts. That has happened in 2% of cases when we went out to put in a connection and we have passed that information on. That is not what is envisaged in NBI's plan.

It also proposes to charge a cheaper connection fee within the intervention footprint than the regulated connection charge Eir levies for the 300,000. We charge a connection fee of €170. My understanding is that NBI proposes a charge of €100. The service level agreement NBI proposes includes repairing 90% of faults within two days. The percentage in the national SLA is in the 80s. The reality of including a goal of 90% in the SLA means that engineers will be sitting around at home in north Donegal or west Kerry waiting for a repair to be required. They just do not come in in those volumes.