Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

On the staff numbers, National Broadband Ireland ultimately is responsible for making sure the company is sufficiently staffed to meet the demands of the project. The numbers anticipated at bid stage, again, were modelled by the bidder, not the Department. NBI put forward its best business case. The numbers provided are not too far off where the numbers are today. It is important to make the point that National Broadband Ireland was a brand new company in January 2020. We all know what happened in March 2020. NBI went from an initial staff of 30 to 40 in early 2020 to 230 today. This is one of the areas where Covid did wreak a bit of havoc in terms of efficient outcomes for the project. There were delays in getting from 30 to 40 staff to 230 because of Covid. The staff complement could be 240 next week because NBI is still engaged in recruitment. It was a very difficult environment to recruit people. When recruiting in telecommunications, you are recruiting engineers, accountants, designers and so on, who are very specialist people in a very small pool. NBI was trying to hire these staff online, with no in-person engagement and when they started their job there was no office to go to. As is the case with regard to starting an new job in any company or business, new staff feed off being able to work in an environment where people work together in offices, rooms and workshops. That did present a big challenge for NBI over the past 12 to 14 months. I visited the NBI offices yesterday. The car park was full and the office is now fully ramped up. Everything is in place, with teams working diligently in the office and across the country. NBI is in a very different place today than it was, say, 12 months. That is one of the areas where Covid was not kind from a staffing perspective.

On staff numbers, I believe NBI has sufficient numbers. It certainly has sufficient brain power within the company. There are some excellent staff at senior management level and right down through the value chain from engineers to accountants to legal and everything else that they need to run this project.

We are very confident in the business's capacity to run the project. Whether it might need another ten or 20 staff to make sure the project is delivered is again a matter for the board of the directors, but it is in a very good position staff-wise at the moment.