Mr. Mark Griffin:

The Deputy has raised a number of issues there and I will ask Mr. Mulligan to respond to some of them.

I will start with the good news, as it were. When we spoke in February the position as outlined by the Comptroller and Auditor General in his opening remarks and as set out in the chapter was not where we wanted to be, in terms of the number of premises passed and connected. The committee would have heard that from NBI as well and about the mitigations that were put in place. We are seeing a significant shift in activity in terms of designs completed, the number of premises that are make-ready commenced and the numbers that are coming through the make-ready programme. We have 158,000 that are through the make-ready programme and have gone into the NBI hopper to complete the premises-passed programme and be made available for connection for householders. A good pipeline of activity is happening and there is a lot more confidence on our part in terms of the line of sight we have on the direction of travel of the project-----