Mr. Mark Griffin:

I can make a few comments on it and ask Mr. Mulligan to come in and deal with some of the more granular aspects. He has been grappling with this at the coalface for the past three years. The initial cost estimate cited of €355 million to €512 million was for a scheme of much narrower scope. That scheme was announced in 2014 by the then Minister, former Deputy Pat Rabbitte, and it primarily took in providing fibre backhaul to approximately 1,100 areas, primarily villages, in rural Ireland, with the assumption being that the commercial sector would deal with what we termed the last mile. That is a loose term as the distance could be much further or less than a mile. It was a different scope and it was predominantly focused on fibre backhaul to these 1,100 locations. It did not make provision for connection costs to individual premises.

As our own intervention strategy developed and we did further work on this, and again in consultation with the market, the view was that the scheme was not fit for purpose. It was felt that a scheme that would provide a connection to individual premises in rural Ireland was absolutely critical. I will not get into the cost estimates, if the Deputy allows me that latitude, because we are still in the procurement process. The first cost estimate that was based on a high-level desktop analysis and it was a higher figure than the €355 million to €512 million estimate that was mooted.

There is another aspect and the Deputy might have heard reports from the National Transport Authority, NTA, in the media this morning. We are talking about a bespoke project. It is not like a road, where one could say a project would cost €10 million to €12 million per kilometre or a school where we might know the specification is for a particular size or number of classrooms. This is a project which had no national comparators until Eir did its 300,000 premises, and there were very few international comparators. As the chairman of the NTA said before a committee yesterday, it would not be able to put a cost on MetroLink until the final design is completed, and we have had the same experience.

We have used the competitive dialogue process as it allows us to engage directly with bidding parties. It is used where projects are particularly complex and the target solution is not known at the outset. It allows engagement with these parties' understanding of what the requirements are, as well as their market knowledge and experience of projects both nationally and internationally. The cost framework has been complicated to an extent by Eir's 300,000 premises taking a chunk of homes from the intervention area but as part of that evolutionary process, our understanding of the likely subsidy levels, the technology, construction and operation costs, demand, revenue projection, risks and so on all evolve. We are now satisfied that we know the figure.

We have constantly updated our models. Will I let the expert who is in the bowels of this-----