Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 17 January 2013

Public Accounts Committee

Commission for Aviation Regulation - Financial Statement 2011
Commission for Communications Regulation - Financial Statement 2011
Commission for Energy Regulation - Financial Statement 2011

11:25 am

Mr. Alex Chisholm:

Last June, one of the operators who obviously had an interest in the auction expressed a concern that we might not be looking after our data sufficiently carefully and that this was going to be a big issue vis-à-vis the upcoming auction because clearly the ability to maintain confidential data through that process was of paramount importance. Obviously, we did not feel that we had an issue with our ability to maintain confidential data and we had taken very careful and elaborate steps to make sure that we would be able to maintain it and said so at the time. Over time, the operator became satisfied with our assurances. What is crucial here is that this concern was expressed before the auction and the auction, which was one of incredible complexity and very high financial value, has been conducted without a single data leakage. That has been absolutely fundamental to the success of the process because if it had been known even who the bidders were, how many bidders were involved or what they were bidding, that would have immediately cut into the whole viability of having an auction of this kind. None of those bad effects or other worries actually materialised and the auction was conducted with complete success from the point of view of information security as well as in terms of its overall results.