Mr. Ciar?n ? h?b?in:

I understand from where the Chairman is coming and I will do my best to provide a comprehensive response. When NBI gets to the detailed design for an area, that is at a point when there would be greater clarity as to whether another operator is now in the area. What we have to ensure in that regard, however, is that nobody in the intervention area is left without a high-speed broadband service. A critical point is that where other operators build and encroach on the area, they have given no commitment in that regard, whereas in the case of the 300,000 premises that were taken off the map, the operators had to commit to passing and connecting all of those addresses.

One could find infrastructure in an area where the majority of people - 100 out of 130 - in a hinterland could get access to it. NBI will still have to hit the remaining 30. What one has to look at there is whether NBI, in reaching the 30, will have to effectively get through where the other 100 are and incur that cost. If that is the case, the public interest is best served by them selling services to those 100 premises for which they will have to incur the cost of overbuild.

Practical solutions can be arrived at. For example, in the University of Limerick, HEAnet has rolled out a high-speed broadband network. NBI will now not go in there spending taxpayers' money to duplicate a network when there is 100% certainty that the need is being met.