Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 14 October 2021

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications
Chapter 9 - Remediation of Landfill Sites

9:30 am

Mr. Fergal Mulligan:

If NBI misses further milestones under the plan from February 2022, those delay payments will apply each day. A financial penalty must be paid for each day that the company is late from that point onwards. I reiterate that NBI, as a commercial company, also suffers two other non-contractual financial penalties that are far more severe. Every month that NBI is delayed in meeting its targets will mean less revenue coming into the business and that will result in its profits being lower. In addition, the working capital requirements of the company are more severe and they need to reach those requirements. NBI will therefore face significant business implications if there are delays with this build, as well as the contractual implications. The other key performance indicator that we have for NBI measures network performance. It includes any outages, on a BCP, for example. If one of those went down between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., significant service deductions and performance indicators exist in that regard. Again, they have been in place since last year and they will be in place for the 25 years.