Mr. T.J. Malone:

We engaged with the Department. The existing procurement process we have under the contract is that we allocate and run mini tenders for each of the various deployment areas. Each of the four main principal contractors that are on the ground at the moment, with Gaeltec being a fifth one to come in, tender for the 20 deployment areas, for example, as we put them out at a particular time. The areas won by a contractor could be located anywhere in the country. A company may win a tender for an area in Cork and another in Donegal or Dublin. That leads to greater inefficiencies for the contractors. They could have a depot set up in three or four different locations, with management split between those locations. They would have to deal with different smaller local contractors on the ground in each of the different deployments. There is cross-over and inefficiency in overhead built into that. It was done for the right reason at the time, namely, to make sure we got the best value at any particular time throughout the process. We engaged with the Department and are currently working through a system by means of which we hope to be able to split the country into four regions. We will set out a region for each of the four principal contractors and bring a secondary contractor into each region as well. In effect, that will help to offset some of the inflationary areas the contractors are currently experiencing. It will reduce their overheads in staffing, travel and the warehouses, yards, offices and so on that they are using in each area. While it will not solve the entire problem, it will go some way to alleviating it.