Mr. T.J. Malone:

No, Eir would already have had an agreement with CIÉ from the work it was doing previously to this, so this was a new agreement we had put in place ourselves.

In respect of the ESB, the Chairman may have seen instances when he was out on site himself about crossing bridges and so on. We have come to an agreement with the ESB this week, which is being documented and finalised. I imagine that in the next three to four days, that will be put to bed from the ESB’s point of view.

As for TII, while it has always worked with us, the issue we had was that it had a rule on the ground that it could not have two contractors working consecutively on the same national road at any one time. We piloted in Blessington an agreement to have two contractors working concurrently, which would be another company and ourselves or Eir and ourselves, on the same stretch of road. That is now being rolled out around the country. We have made significant progress in all three of those areas.