Dr. Matt Yardley:

We understand this is a critical area for the Department to understand. I break it down to two stages. During the early stages of the procurement, namely, the PQQ stage, it was really about the consortia demonstrating experience of other projects of a similar scope. They did that across a range of areas. We were interested in experience in the deployment or build of similar networks, the long-term live operation of similar networks, their experience of operating wholesale networks, which is particularly relevant to any state aid project, and some issues to do with quality, health and safety and so on. At that point, we were confident they met all of the criteria laid out at the PQQ stage. Moving forward through procurement to, in particular, the final bid stage, the bidder provided a great deal more detail on the proposed network. In summary, the bidder is building a substantial organisation. That includes 265 people in the core National Broadband Ireland, NBI, business. Many of the senior managers of that entity are now public. The NBI website lists 12 people. What is interesting there is that many of those people are industry veterans. They have been working in the telecommunications sector for a long time, many of them in Ireland, for a whole range of operators. At the senior management level, we were confident that this was shaped in a well structured manner. Beneath that, we were looking at how all of the functions within the business were structured. That is still within NBI. Part of the evaluation criteria looked at that in some detail from an ongoing operations perspective. We turned then to all of the partners they would rely on for delivery of the network. We have there a range of companies which are very well established in Ireland and which work with all of the operators in Ireland themselves. These are the main subcontractors for the build and operation of the network. In that sense, NBI is not doing anything different from any other operator in Ireland. It is subcontracting to a range of very well qualified organisations. That was demonstrated at the PQQ stage and throughout the process to final bid stage.

The whole track of evaluation was very carefully done. NBI met all of the criteria. As such, it passed that test. Looking more broadly at how the organisation is gearing up, this looks and feels like a credible wholesale entity. It is at the right scale, which is a scale similar to what we see in other markets around Europe. It is partnering with well established and recognised organisations. As such, we are confident that a very credible bid has been put forward.