Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Regarding the 340,000 premises that are Eir's part of the intervention area, Analysys Mason described them to us as a double whammy and outlined what that meant. First, it incurred a significant capital cost for the State, as the remaining bidder had no guarantee that it would be able to use Eir's infrastructure or that there would be no difficulties in accessing it. Second, the remaining bidder would be prohibited from generating income within Eir's area, which continues to expand. According to the letter from Eir which we received approximately an hour before this meeting, there are specific examples of reusing the lessons and infrastructure for the 300,000 premises. In the access network open eir's rural 300,000 premises design also included spare fibre to facilitate the roll-out beyond the boundaries of the 300,000 premises footprint. According to the letter, Eir offered the use of this spare fibre to National Broadband Ireland but, for reasons unclear to it, it declined to use it and instead overbuilt on it. This has been a major question and a number of issues arise. Mr. Mulligan was present at the press conference when the Minister announced this in April 2017. The minute the A3 sized map was laid out in front of us, what was happening was clear. Clusters of houses, villages and towns were being connected by Eir. I will put a straight question to Mr. Mulligan. He stated Eir had to be allowed to proceed. Ministers have said the same. However, has the Department ever laid the map down in front of the European Commission and stated that, by allowing this to happen, it would banjax the process and make it more difficult? This is not just being stated by Analysys Mason. The ESB has been stating for a long time that it was blown out of the process and has made this clear more publicly in recent weeks. Were there detailed meetings and conversations with the European Commission about how, if this were allowed to happen in the case of the 840,000 premises being serviced, it would doughnut the housing clusters and villages and make the situation next to impossible? Apart from the increased complexity, consider the amount of discussion and hours spent on this issue. We can only imagine what the 80 people working on it have been doing to try to work through this complex web, or what some would call a mess.