Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

There is a target number of premises passed for each milestone and the aggregate number for the end of the year has yet to be determined. Earlier today, Mr. Malone from NBI indicated he expects between 100,000 and 130,000 premises to have been constructed. "Constructed" is different from "passed", as we all understand. A household being “passed” is what allows it to order a broadband service. We do not yet have a number for that from NBI in respect of the end of the year. We are still scrutinising that because our job is to challenge whether that is the best the operator can do. We want it to go faster and do more, and my engineers are scrutinising whether that is a credible number and whether we can get the operator to go faster. That is what we are going through at the moment and in March, we will have a number that, as Mr. Griffin said, we will share with the committee once we are satisfied it is the maximum number it can achieve by the end of the year given the conditions it is working under.

Within that, there are a number of milestones. There are milestones for all the deployment areas in Louth and Cavan. Every deployment area has a milestone attached to it. That is why this year, there could be 15 or 20 milestones we are checking along the way to see whether the operator will achieve them. There are 227 deployment areas. That figure has to be multiplied by the number of milestones and there is also a milestone for designs.

For 25 years, including from day one, there are penalties for the key performance indicators, KPIs, that apply. It is supposed to be a 24-7, 365 service, with some limited time for upgrades to systems and so on.

However, if NBI goes outside the contract, penalties will apply. For example, the contract might allow for systems to be fixed between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m, and if it goes beyond that, we will penalise NBI because customers should not have any downtime on the service. That is what is unique about the broadband network. Unlike commercial operators-----