Mr. Liam O'Brien:

Yes, we can share that report with the committee. We will put a link into the document. We are the highest for some charges and second highest for others in the European market. That is not only bad for operators like ourselves trying to compete in the market and relying on the infrastructure of the incumbent but it is also bad for the Irish citizen in terms of having to pay these fees.

One only has to look at Eir's financial performance as well to see some of the evidence of that flowing through in the books. Eir's total profitability or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation, EBITDA, at 40% means it is one of the most profitable incumbents in Europe, and it is fixed-line EBITDA, so taking it away from the mobile business it is 45%, which again is very high in terms of its peers in Europe. It also, coincidentally, has one of the highest reliance on a wholesale market than anybody else, relying upon other operators like ourselves here representing ALTO. More than 26% of its revenue comes from wholesale operators so one gets a combination of high prices and also, effectively, a large part of that market then underpins its business. It is also, perhaps not coincidentally, one of the most heavily indebted operators in Europe, with more than €2 billion of debt still on its books. That is not a great financial vista.

It is our view that the current regulatory structure is fundamentally failing the market. I refer here to the lack of regulation of the incumbent and of Eir. Two independent reports commissioned by ComReg last year, the so-called Cartesian report and the KPMG report, point to some of this, highlighting significant governance findings hindering Eir's behaviour and how it behaves in the market.

ComReg has completed an initial review and it is consulting on that. Hopefully, more progress is expected during this year. We feel that the most appropriate model that will deliver proper fundamental and systematic changes is what is known as functional separation, which is effectively a separation of the retail from the wholesale arm of Eir into two distinct entities as the only avenue that will ensure sustainable competition in the market. When one sees a company which has a wholesale and retail business effectively side by side, one gets the sort of behaviours one sees in the market whereby there is a connection charge to wholesale operators of €272 and effectively a free connection charge to its own retail customers on the other side. Some of those sort of behaviours are what can occur. For us, what this means is that it is a fantastic opportunity for ComReg in the coming years to address some of these issues and to take the appropriate action moving in that direction. We believe that only deeper structural remedies can provide the right competitive environment and give that balance to the regulatory regime that we are looking for.

A slightly tangential point is that there was an auction early in 2017 for 3.6 GHz spectrum, the so-called 5G spectrum. The auction was run by ComReg. That spectrum is key for the roll-out of 5G in the coming years. Another operator still remains on that spectrum nearly 18 months later and ComReg is refunding money to operators as a result. This is money that was paid to ComReg to purchase the spectrum and that is now being effectively drip fed back to some operators because we have not had access to that spectrum. We do not want that to continue-----