Mr. Rory Fitzpatrick:

I have no idea what their capacity numbers are. They would be very high because it is a global platform. Ireland is a tiny speck in it. I do not know how many we would need to get to for it to become an issue. The committee would need to bring in the engineers from Starlink to discuss that. We are not selling the service. We just provide them with a ground segment and run a ground station support for them. Representatives from Starlink would need to come in and talk to the committee about this. I am sure they would be happy to do so. As soon as they have a licence, they will be able to sell into the Irish market and customers here will be able to get up and running.

On Eutelsat, SES and all the other matters, I mentioned all the issues with the different Departments because ours is a small country and those Departments have small budgets. It would be hard for us to get the kind of service that nations such as Germany, France and Italy get. Those countries have huge defence budgets and they can throw money at it. We have enough for a little bit, but we do not have enough to have our own system. We are piggy-backing all the time. My suggestion is that we would take a load of these different services and put them together in order to deliver an overall service. Starlink certainly delivers in respect of the issue we have in remote areas right now. However, most of the country is already covered with services. I live in a black spot and I cannot get any coverage. Digiweb is there and other providers - I think, Huawei - are offering 3G there. We do have service there. If I had a choice, I would prefer a fibre service. I do have some service, however. Most of the country has some service, but there is a small bit that is extremely problematic. That is where the satellite comes in and delivers straight away.

Eutelsat and SES offer advantages in terms of their networks. These would fit with Mr. Campbell's and Ms Cullen O’Reilly's roll-out of their networks because they would support indigenous Irish companies that deliver a service to the market. That is where I see that being such a useful tool. As a country, we would benefit from having home-based services that are developed to provide solutions for us rather than us just accessing a global service. I say that even though, for broadband, Starlink is awesome.