Dr. Dónal Palcic:

It was the conflict in what the Department is doing. That is a big structure that they will have to put in place. They have budgeted €10 million per annum. It is a very big structure that they will have to put in place. If one reads the KPMG document, practically every second line reads "if the contract is implemented appropriately ... if there is appropriate governance on monitoring ... if there is this or if there is that...". It is constantly saying it. It states a number of times that the success of this plan or otherwise will all come down to the monitoring of this contract. That will require a big, well-resourced multi-disciplinary and thorough team within the Department.

They have talked about a longer-term vision of a State agency to do all of this. That is a big duplication of regulatory functions in the telecommunications sector that a highly experienced ComReg is already doing. I would wonder what the cost of all of that will be purely in order to deliver this type of plan and the conflict that there might be, and maybe the overlap, with some of ComReg's existing functions.