Mr. Peter Hendrick:

I look at the future and I see it being a lot brighter than the last two years of the programme. That is largely because we are now building in all 26 counties. This goes back to the confidence by operators and investors in projects like this. The unknown risks raise a lot of concerns and for the last two years we have been able to measure all those risks. Almost a year ago today we were able to measure the 19,000 premises we had under construction. We did not have full deployment areas completed but we had a measure of what those risks were and what we needed to do on our volumes in order to hit a five-year programme. As such, we engaged with Eir on the number of poles it needed to replace per annum and the number of kilometres of underground duct that needed to be repaired or installed and we contracted with Eir to move from 22,000 poles per annum to over 50,000 poles per annum, and from 1,500 km of duct installation to 2,500 km. To a degree, and certainly with regard to the poles, that has meant that our "make ready" programme will be a lot faster.