Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The 40 ISPs have 125,000 customers. Some of those customers' houses will be passed. They will have the option of getting the fibre connection at a charge of €100. A total of 2% might be by alternative means but the vast majority will be fibre. Does Mr. Matthews believe his ISPs will keep the retail relationship and switch over to the fibre connection? Will he migrate that easily from his fixed wireless network to retail through the fibre? If there is not a sufficient number of customers, where is that risk that the Department would lift the retail restriction?

It has been fairly clear all along that this has to be open access. There could be open access where the provider was also acting as a retailer, I suppose. There is no sense whatever that Grattan McCourt has infrastructure or any interest in becoming a retail provider. Surely that is not the risk to the companies represented here. The risk is that some other service provider with another retail arm would use the fibre connection to compete with them and take out small, local, indigenous companies that have been doing a good job over the past 20 years. The bigger risk is not that the developer would take the business but that other retailers would do so.