Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 6 December 2018

Public Accounts Committee

2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment
Chapter 8 - Measures relating to Cyber Security
Chapter 9 - Energy Efficiency National Fund

9:00 am

Mr. Mark Griffin:

The thing that runs many of the mobile phone services throughout the European Union is a thing called spectrum. Spectrum is used by mobile phones services, broadcasting services and the emergency services. There is a particular band of spectrum that is used by broadcasting services, the 700 MHz spectrum. A decision has been taken at EU level that should now be used for wireless broadband services. There is a process by which RTÉ will migrate its broadcasting through that spectrum onto another platform. That requires capital investment. We provided the funding for that. There was a detailed service level agreement, a letter of entrustment and all the rest. It is carrying out the capital works on its network and we have reimbursed it for that.