Ms Carolan Lennon:

We actually would. I answered that question very honestly. If one looks at where we were at the time, we had kicked off our own fibre to the cabinet roll-out. At the time, we thought we would have the budget to pass a million homes. We were faster and at the end it was cheaper than we had thought because when we got to do it, our ducts were in better shape than we thought and we went further with the money we had. We were coming to the end of that and had to decide where to go next. Because we had been involved in mechanical, electrical and process design, MEP, we were looking at solutions for rural Ireland; we had it broken down into commercial opportunities, and there was a commercial opportunity in the next 100,000 and so on. We had all that work done. When the Department asked us, we had a machine that was able to build networks, so we were not going to disband that machine, we were going to keep going and when that request came in, we strongly believed there was a commercial return to do another 300,000 homes and businesses at a cost of €250 million. One will not be talking to me this time next year if there is no commercial return on it because we are a private company. It is Eir's money that is being spent. Absolutely, we would have done it.