Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

In terms of its digital agenda, the European Commission has an ambition to get a gigabit society. The only thing that is in a quasi-legal document that allows one to intervene with state aid from the point of view of the Directorate-General for Competition Communications Networks, Content and Technology, which approves state aid, is the threshold at 30 Mbps. To clarify that so that members do not get the wrong end of the stick on what we can and cannot do - and it is open to Ireland to do this - some member states can intervene and set a bar at 100 Mbps or 500 Mbps in grey areas where there are other commercial companies offering 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps, if the country believes from a policy perspective that it needs to do that. Ireland has not done that and it is only intervening in white areas. When the decision is made to only intervene in white areas, which is what we have done because of the commercial activities in all the other areas, there is no market failure in other areas as we see it, other than in the white areas, which are what we have designated and where 544,000 people are based. Some countries have intervened in grey areas, even in cities, and they have decided to subsidise networks that will offer 1,000 Mbps, for example. It is open to us to do that but we must get state aid approval. It is a new state aid approval process but it is open to us to do that.

I note that the European Commission is revising the state aid guidelines and consulting on them. I expect, therefore, that in the next 12 to 18 months, a new and updated set of state aid guidelines will presumably change that 30 Mbps threshold but we do not know.