Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I was formerly Minister in that Department and we delivered many projects. The Minister will have read the transcripts. In my experience, the Department is good in this area and has capability. Having worked for seven years on the contract, it probably knows more than anyone else about how a broadband scheme should be rolled out. We are investing €3.25 billion, whereas, without meaning anything against Mr. McCourt or his company, that company is putting in a bank note to the effect that it will be able to get an overdraft facility of €45 million. It is not investing any cash. It will get a rate of return, but we do not know what it will be. I presume it will be a good rate of return. The €2 billion the Minister mentioned will be paid by the people. Given that all of it is in our books, that almost all of it is our cash and that we have the expertise in the departmental officials, those officials could have easily worked with the other contractors and told them where to put the wire in the same way as happened in the case of the metropolitan area networks, MANs. We undertook those significant projects of scale. Even at a late stage, why did we not use the concession model instead of the gap model as in the end, we would have owned the asset? I cannot get my head around why we will not own the asset at the end of the process.