Mr. Ciarán Ó hÓbáin:

I will make a very quick reference. Looking at the figures and the gap, it is absolutely not €2 billion in the first instance. In fairness to Eir's CEO, looking to her testimony, which I have been through and to the letter, it is very clear to me that what she was doing was trying to be helpful to the committee in responding to a question by saying what it would cost to continue the roll-out in rural Ireland to the 300,000. She was not saying that this would be done as the NBP because once we start to do it as that, clearly, if there is a cheque coming from the taxpayer to fund that, with that comes - I will not go into it - a minimum level of controls so that the taxpayer can be sure that in the event that this thing does not go to plan or if the commitments are not met, we get our money back or we are protected. In fairness, when we asked Eir for further information, it was forthcoming and quickly responded with information. It is clear, looking at that, that there are optimistic scenarios, a mid-case scenario and we have our hard case scenario. Clearly, when we are looking for money for a project like this, we talk of maximum numbers. We are not going to go into it today regarding the optimistic number in terms of the capital clawback coming to our advantage or the revenue uptake being higher and what that might be. That kind of speculation would not be helpful.

In terms of other models and the USO in particular, there is a USO for copper and it is a USO for functional Internet access. I do not know how it would work if one tried to do it with one's phone here today but 28 kbps is the functional Internet access. That is what exists in Ireland today. The new European electronic communication code, which is due to come into force by December of next year, allows for, and Ireland argued for this in the context of the development of the directive, the provision of adequate broadband through a USO. The directive is very clear that there is a hierarchy as to how broadband should be provided in member states. It should be provided in the first instance by commercial operators, which is not surprising because we operate in a liberalised telecoms market. The next way the directive provides that broadband should be provided is through public policy instruments. That is the national broadband plan or it could be the approach to spectrum auctions, etc. One uses the tools available. Very much as a last and third resort we could have a USO.

I understand that this is an area that ComReg would propose to look at when the new code is transposed, in particular in the light of the NBP being delivered, to see if there are areas still remaining. The code is clear that it is looking to the final percentage as we move forward and even if we have done the whole country. It is looking to ensure for that percentage if it happened that the approach taken in a member state was such that there were new instances of people who could not get broadband.

If Ireland were to take such an approach, the code will have to be transposed in December of next year, ComReg would then have to do its analysis as to whether a USO was appropriate, and then there would have to be engagement with the market on this key term of adequate broadband. Looking to the directive for the kind of services it should be possible to carry out under the definition of adequate broadband, it would seem that it would be possible to do them at relatively modest broadband speeds. In the UK, for example, there is a USO of 10 Mbps. The expectation is that it would be at a low level. If we were to go the route of introducing a USO, establishing the adequate broadband level and getting it high enough to be meaningful and to work, market players would have to be allowed an opportunity. We could not just designate. We would have to allow market operators the opportunity to come forward to offer themselves to be that USO provider.