Mr. Peter Evans:

Many of them are addressed in the report. They include things like the transparency of pricing for the MANs. We are a customer of the MANs. We spend quite a lot of money every year buying services from them. We were concerned that the pricing, the levels of pricing and the discounting were not as transparent as we believed necessary in a public contract such as that for MANs. We also believed that, in managing that contract, the Department would benefit from bringing in ComReg. ComReg is the expert in telecommunications in Ireland and the expert regulator. It understands cost models, pricing and competition. We sought the bringing in of ComReg to provide a level of governance on that contract not only now, but on an ongoing basis. We had a number of other concerns around the operation of the managed services entity. Does the managed services entity own and run the MANs or is it a telecommunications operator itself? The EU state aid rules make it very clear that it was not to be an operator, but it clearly is an operator today. We believe that necessitated a level of separation between the company that manages the MANs and the company that runs the commercial organisation. Some of that level of transparency between the two organisations is addressed in the Analysys Mason report.