Mr. Patrick Neary:

Gigabit networks are being deployed across the State primarily through commercial operators. There are 2.55 million premises in Ireland and just under 2 million of those will be served by commercial operators. This is because they are commercially attractive to address.

It is not cost prohibitive for the operators to roll out their networks towards those 2 million. The State's main role is to look at the cohort the commercial operators will not address. That is being addressed through our national broadband plan. We have identified 560,000 premises through that project. The State is investing more than €2.7 million over 25 years, which is mostly upfront because we are building a network through NBI. That is where the market failure exists so that is where the State's emphasis-----