Mr. Mark Griffin:

Another point I would make goes back to the state aid rules. I refer to the criticality of reusing existing infrastructure to the greatest extent possible. We have already received some criticism about the fact that we have had to traverse the Eir 300,000, but if we ended up building a new network in the intervention area, the cost to the taxpayer would be multiples of what is on the table at present.

The other important point is that Eir has worked closely with NBI over the past while to try to come to an arrangement which works commercially for it and for NBI in terms of access to its infrastructure. Eir is involved in an access infrastructure agreement. The company will be working on a make-ready programme which is critical to the roll-out of this contract when it gets under way. Eir is a really important player in all of that. That is quite understandable because we need access to its infrastructure, both poles and ducts. We circulated some figures. Ninety per cent of the Eir pole network is used and probably a higher percentage of the Eir duct network. It is a critical part of the project overall. In terms of the duct network, 338,000 km of new duct and 14,000 km of duct rented from Eir, and 90,000 new poles and 1.2 millions poles rented from Eir. Eir is a major part of the equation. That is inevitable when one goes back to the state aid rules, which make a big play about reuse of infrastructure. Ultimately, it ends up a cheaper way to do the contract.