Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

I believe it might have been referring to its view on the subsidy. Everybody would agree that Eir had concluded a fairly arduous commitment agreement negotiation with us for six months, or nine months, starting with the first draft of the contract agreement. That was a difficult process. We imposed significant, onerous requirements on the company, which, in the main, we understand it met in terms of the passing and connecting milestone. It is nearly there. I do not believe Eir would say the aspect to which the Senator referred did not add complexity to the procurement process. I am sure its bid team - it had a bid team that was separate from the commercial team - would admit that having to remove the 300,000, redo its network design, reproduce the commercial model and renegotiate the legal contract added complexity to its process in dealing with us, and in our dealing with it. The same applied to the SIRO bidders and Granahan McCourt. From that perspective, all three bidders were in the same position.

Deputy Stanley asked about the impact on cost and the subsidy. A mixture of many aspects had an impact on where we are now. On the subsidy, there is less revenue in the model so clearly bidders such as the ESB would say there was a lot less revenue and it was, therefore, less commercial. One bidder said it believed there was a pretty significant impact on its ability to bid but, again, it was planning to use its own network. It might see the world differently from Eir, which was using its network. Enet was planning to use the Eir network or the MAN, or a combination of both. Therefore, there were three different bidders with three different views of the world in terms of the commercial impact of the 300,000. The ESB indicated clearly in the past week that it had a significantly detrimental impact on its commercial view of the world in this context. There may also be other aspects it is considering.