Mr. Denis O'Leary:

The ESB has a nationwide infrastructure. We have a connection and probably a piece of equipment in most fields throughout the country. Eir has a similar national infrastructure except that it is predominantly along the roadside. Fibre can be run on the ESB electricity infrastructure. Before we signed the joint venture with SIRO and allowed it to roll out fibre on the ESB infrastructure, we carried out intensive testing on the fibre network at our main test centre in Portlaoise. We also built test facilities in different parts of the country and tested the network under the most extreme conditions in the context of storm loading, wind loading and ice loading. We then developed a set of criteria and standards that would have to apply and would be applied by the local ESB networks management team to any company that wanted to run fibre on the ESB infrastructure, namely, SIRO. We are confident about the ability of the electricity infrastructure to hold the fibre network if the standards are applied without any risk to the key purpose of the electricity infrastructure, which is the delivery of a reliable supply of electricity to all customers. The latter is the one thing we would not want to undermine in any way. We have done that work and are confident about it. It is not easy running fibre on the electricity network because there is energy on the infrastructure. In the vast majority of cases, the network must be disconnected and earthed before any work can be allowed in order to string the fibre. It can be done and it is possible to do it if due regard is had to the electricity infrastructure.