Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 29 June 2022
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport
National Broadband Plan Update: National Broadband Ireland
Mr. T.J. Malone:
I cannot say. I suppose it is like asking how long a piece of string is in certain cases. The court case is going to be heard in the next few weeks. We hope we will have a direction of travel to enable us to move somewhere with Eir then. I would have thought the determination and exact ruling in this case will probably not come back until September. Therefore, in that context, I cannot be sure of the timeline. It is not within my remit, but that is what I would think will happen. We are hoping the direction of travel will be sufficient to allow us to stand this aspect up and to start to engage with Eir. If we can engage with the company under the existing major infrastructure programme, MIP, we think we could accomplish this task relatively quickly. When I say that, I mean in several months. As we said earlier, though, if we go into a regulated access product, that process then will take between 12 and 18 months.
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