Noel Dempsey (Meath, Fianna Fail)

I challenged the industry because I believe it can deliver 500,000 connections by the end of next year. There have been many challenges in this regard. The regulator attempted to expedite the local loop and bundling, and that ended up in the High Court. No matter how good the regulation, the system in place from a European point of view and from our national legislation point of view is that once a direction is given a person or company has a right to appeal and go to the courts. There is not much I can do to prevent them from doing so. The last decision of the regulator was fought in the High Court precisely because they tried to remove Eircom's right of appeal to the LLU direction given. ComReg is continuing to work with the fixed line incumbent and the alternate operators to try to agree a methodology for an early roll-out of LLU. I will assist the process in any way I can.

See this speech in context