Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the presentation. To follow up on the Chairman's point, the difficulty many people have is that they see fibre from Eir on a pole 30 m from the entrance to their homes and they cannot understand clearly why Eir is not in a position to provide a service to them. We are not asking it to go a mile or three miles up the road. We are asking it to review where its service terminates and to look within close proximity to that to see if it can do any extension. We all understand that NBI now has a contract but we would like Eir to consider that.

I will move on to the customer care issue because there is no doubt that people are concerned about their inability to report faults to Eir and get an adequate response. Ms Lennon said that Eir has had 200,000 faults since April. That seems a very high number. She has given an explanation for that but could it be argued that there has been a lack of investment in infrastructure over recent years? Is there a plan to make a greater investment there?

I ask Ms Lennon to address the issue of staffing. When I read her statement last night, I was shocked to hear that 80 people gave up their jobs between March and July. It seems bizarre that, when so many others were losing jobs, people would give up their jobs and the opportunity to work from home, albeit in a more difficult environment. I would like Ms Lennon to drill down into that a bit. How many staff does Eir have overall in that area?