Mr. Michael Mahon:

I will start by highlighting where we are on the North side. We wrote to landowners last October to give them an outline and said that we wanted to engage with them to offer a voluntary compensation package for us constructing the network on their land and for them to host the network for us.

We followed that up in early November with a letter to each landowner, outlining the compensation package they were being offered based on the amount of cable crossing their land. Our landowner engagement team has been seeking to meet and engage with landowners on that basis since the beginning of November. That is continuing and we are due to draw it to a close at the end of February. As part of that, we outlined that there is an early signing bonus, to a maximum of €6,000 and a minimum of €3,000, of which people can avail. That is coming to an end on 9 February. Our landowner team is, in effect, going from door to door, engaging with people. There has been a lot of positive interaction. Many people are happy they are being engaged with and offered compensation. Several other people are saying they do not wish to engage. We have noted that and moved on. We are in the process of going to many landowners who have called us back. We sent an updated letter last week to clarify the dates, outline the next steps of the process beyond the voluntary process and correct some of the narrative that was out there regarding the project, next steps, statutory powers and all that. That letter landed last week and we have had a big uptake, with phone calls from landowners seeking for us to go out and engage. Our team is quite busy meeting landowners this week.