Mr. John O'Dwyer:

ComReg would need to do it. Eir has a choice. It can either offer a voluntary version of functional separation, which is allowed under the European Commission rules. A voluntary version would be much easier to bring forward. A compulsory version, which the regulator would try to enforce, is much more difficult to do. I suspect that ComReg would face a number of challenges if it tried to do this because legal proceedings may be brought to try to stop it. If it was done voluntarily, as an agreement with the regulator, that would be a much quicker way of moving forward. Both the wholesale and retail businesses would be owned by Eir and the board would control them, but they would be run as two separate divisions.