Mr. Tony Murphy:

It encourages projects to be future-proofed and seeks to ensure measures taken will not be redundant after three or four years. Broadband plans are submitted to the Commission which has an input and monitors the type of plan proposed. Germany is vectoring with cable from the phone system; it is not using fibre, which is a little surprising. When we considered the matter, it seemed as if things were quite positive. The process was co-ordinated and fibre was being used. It seemed that, even if we would not meet the 2020 targets, it was more than likely that we would meet the 2025 targets in full.

On public private partnerships, PPPs, the member who raised the matter did not want to go into too much detail, but the Chairman was correct when he said the reports we issued were distributed. We try to circulate them as far as possible. A report on public private partnerships was released in March and it reached conclusions which were not particularly positive. It stated there were limitations with PPPs and that in some cases projects became more costly. The idea that PPPs would solve all problems was not borne out in practice.

Fraud was mentioned a couple of times. We are auditors. If we come across a case where things look a little suspicious, we err on the side of caution and refer it to the European Anti-Fraud Office, OLAF, but that body may not believe there are grounds to launch an investigation. It is not the case that each case is automatically investigated for fraud. However, what said was true - the number of fraud cases is not high. We are never going to totally eliminate fraud; all we can do is try to ensure it is kept to an acceptable minimum. Taxpayer's money should not be subject to fraud; therefore, we have to make sure we have a system in place which protects EU and national funds as much as possible. This feeds into some of the issues raised by the Chairman about whether things can happen in error or by way of an innocent mistake. Some can take those instances as an indication that fraud is occurring when that is not the case. When it comes to legality and the regularity of payments, it is black and white. There is a formalistic approach; something is either right or it is not. When we talk about an error rate of 2.4%, we are not talking about fraud. Some of the projects in which we have found errors are very good ones in that they have delivered exactly what was expected, if not more. It is just an indicative figure; one has to go behind it and into the details to find out what it really means.