Mr. John O'Dwyer:

If one observes this document without going into the detail of regulation, it is difficult to work out what it really means. When one gets into the detail of it to try to understand it, one sees that some, but not all, of the issues are very serious and have quite serious implications. I would like to mention something called address matching as an example.

We did not have postcodes at the time and there is a unique version of everybody's address within Eir's system. The problem is it may not be necessarily the same address that the current occupant of the house would know. As the addresses are not necessarily unique, it can be difficult sometimes to work out what the customer thinks the address is as against the system's address. It is very important to get this right because if a service has to be delivered, it must go to the right address. A telephone line, for example, must be delivered to the right address. This was complicated when unique addresses were not available. Eir had a better set of addresses for its downstream retail arm than was being provided to the rest of industry.

It could take up to a week for some operators selling broadband services, for example, to try to work out the exact address with the customer. This frustrated customers who wondered why the companies did not have something as simple as an address. It could take a week to get the address right going back and forth with Eir trying to work it out. The customer might think the new provider is not doing a very good job and he or she would not move but rather stay with the current provider. It hindered customer choice in changing a provider. This is important, certainly to the customer, and causes consumer harm because customers could not exercise choice and had to pay more money than they might have done otherwise. The new operator would also be hindered from earning money from winning customers. That was the problem.

A two-pronged approach followed. The first was to get Cartesian and KPMG to do a governance investigation operation. This made a number of recommendations, one of which was to have an independent oversight body looking at the governance and operations of Eir, keeping that under control. Simultaneous to those consultations, ComReg investigated non-compliance and took legal proceedings through the High Court. It found several cases of non-compliance and has taken Eir to the High Court to have fines imposed for non-compliance. The case has been held up by a challenge in the High Court which will be heard later this week.