Mr. Mark Griffin:

It has to be an open process. We have received legal advice on that matter. We received it in wondering whether we could assign the function to the ESB. The answer was that we could not. It has to be a procurement process where bidders can come back in. Of course, they might not want to come back in because of all of the discussion concerning Eir doing such a great thing in coming forward with a cost of €1 billion. We simply cannot design a procurement process based on what was done with the 340,000 premises and apply a set of rules which only apply by way of regulation. We have set out the differences between regulation and state aid in our presentation. By the way, we do not accept that the €2 billion that is being spoken about as a difference is by virtue of a heavy regulatory burden. We do not accept that for one second. There are different things at play.