Professor Eoin Reeves:

The Deputy has given a binary choice between one or the other. I do not believe the point was made that there is any guarantee the investor will sweat the asset and run. We did not make that statement. That was not in our opening statement or in our detailed brief. The truth is that we do not know. Nobody knows what will happen in terms of changing technology and the value of the asset at the end of the day. No one ever said that we did know. It is up to the people who are involved in the contract to do their best to try to factor this into the agreement. The problem is that what is in the agreement will be set in stone to a degree. One of the downsides of using a PPP type model is that one loses a bit of flexibility when there is a lock-in to a 25-year contract. That is another aspect we did not mention.