Mr. Kevin O'Brien:

We absolutely agree with the real expectations of small and medium enterprises and individuals in rural areas with regard to their future broadband needs and our ambition is to try to regulate so the marketplace will bring these services to as many places as possible. State intervention is necessary to fill in the gaps in certain areas. The Deputy spoke about a specific complaint in north Cork. We receive many complaints per year and we have a process whereby we require the complainant to have taken it up with the operator for a short period of time, and if he or she has not achieved satisfaction ComReg gets involved. Usually we speak with the operator directly on behalf of the complainant and find a satisfactory solution. In certain cases there is no solution and ComReg needs to take compliance action. We are not afraid to do this. If there are significant outages in a network, or we feel consumers are being charged when they should not be, ComReg takes compliance action which usually gets the right result for the consumer. We can discuss with the Deputy the specific case after the meeting. I am sure it is being dealt with but we can update the Deputy on it.