Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

To be fair to Eir, there was a lot of discussion around that. At the time of it leaving, it was still under discussion. It is also fair to say, however, that it had not been resolved. There was a requirement in our tender documentation regarding anyone who bid. Anybody entering the process was looking for that State guarantee whether it was €400 million or €4 billion. The Government was committing that through a Government decision. We said that we wanted a commensurate guarantee from the private sector so that there would be no doubt that if we entered into a contract and regardless of whether someone was committing €100, €100 million or €1 billion, it had the money to call upon when it was required and there was no way the current or future board of any commercial company in the world could change its mind, because things change over time commercially. That was a key request of ours in the tender documentation, that we got the necessary financial assurance from everybody. We treated everybody equally so we could not deviate for any particular bidder or any particular circumstances. That was an ongoing discussion at the time. Eir presented it as a red flag issue in January 2018. Again, we will never know whether that would have been resolved throughout the rest of dialogue process.