Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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I offer my apologies for being late. I have read the ComReg statement. Is there a difficulty with state aid if it can be shown that a state aid intervention makes a process more expensive than an alternative technological or business solution that could be applied? Is that not a risk in this circumstance? We have an existing operator that has real experience in rolling out broadband in rural Ireland. This operator is able to say it can do it and provide the same level of service, or close to it with slight variations, at a significantly lower cost than the state aid intervention. Surely it would be called into question under state aid rules if we were giving a better economic return in the state aid intervention than, it could be assumed, could be provided by an alternative operator. Is there not a difficulty with that? Are we not running into that difficulty?