Dr. Matt Yardley:

This is a question we get asked a lot in other jurisdictions. It is a very important question in a project of this type. The Deputy termed it our solution but it is not our solution. We went to the market with a specification and the market told us the solution. At that point we had three bidders and they all came forward with a fibre solution.

They are the best entities to optimise the technical solution. We evaluate it and decide whether it meets the criteria but we are not buying a technology as we cannot to do that under state aid rules. We take an option that proposes the best solution for what we require. We looked at fixed wireless early in the process and we did costing work before we engaged any bidders but we had no idea what the solution would be at that point. We did a range of modelling exercises and looked at fibre-only options, mixes of fibre and fixed wireless and we also looked at the different qualities of service on fixed wireless. We concluded that, over a 25-year period, wireless would probably cost the same, or even more, than fibre would cost. It may seem an unusual finding and it might not be the case in many markets but it happens in Ireland because of the distribution of the rural population, which is sparse compared to, for example, England where clusters of villages or hamlets occur even in very rural parts of the country. The ribbon development in Ireland is a challenge for any technology, whether fixed or fixed wireless.