Mr. Mark Griffin:

A further point is that once the project assessment was concluded, the recommendation was made to the steering group and the sign-off of the steering group was achieved, one of the conditions was that an economic appraisal would be undertaken of the project. That was undertaken by Deloitte and it concluded that this was a project that had significant benefit. It is important in all of this, even though there are very significant issues that arose in the governance and management, and in terms of payment claims and so on, to note that this was a project that had very significant potential benefit for broadband provision in the Border region and the North of Ireland. It also had significant potential benefit for business, education, research and development and SMEs, as well as in terms of creating more competition, given competition in the market at the time was quite restricted, as I understand it. Those would have been considerable advantages and drivers in the assessment panel's consideration of the project.

Despite the fact an awful lot has happened, including many things that should not have happened, the conclusion of the PRISA report in 2013 was that an effective piece of infrastructure was provided which had added benefits over and above the scope of the original project, albeit that it was a fraction of what was claimed and valued at a fraction of the grants that were paid through the INTERREG programme.