Mr. Mark Griffin:

I will go back to first principles in terms of the types of models at which we looked. We did look at a large number of models. The Chairman is familiar with this from his time on the committee concerned with telecoms. We looked at full State ownership, a joint venture, the concession type and the gap-funded model. All of that was done pre-2016. A Government decision was taken in 2016 that this was the best model that was available. There were reasons for that, such as the significant reuse of existing private sector infrastructure. The commercial sector will share the construction and demand risk, and there is significant such risk in the early stages of this project. The commercial sector will drive economies of scale. If a strong contract is put in place, which we have done, that will give the State the necessary protections and the State can claw back unused subsidy and share in any excess profits. That was agreed by the Government in 2016. We did a project reappraisal in 2018 when we were down to a single bidder. All the documentation relating to that is in the public domain. There is €175 million that has been put in by the investors. That money is at risk. It does command a rate of return. That would be expected in respect of any investment in a project of this nature. We looked at the rates of return that were under consideration when the contract was being finalised. We did benchmarks internationally, using KPMG, our contact in this regard, and the internal rate of return, IRR, and the interest rate referred to by the Chairman were absolutely typical for projects of this nature where there is significant demand-side risk and an uncertain market. The Chairman referred to the level of uptake so far. We are comfortable enough that we are heading in the right direction but there is significant demand uncertainty. If this was such a sure bet, the uncertainty-----