Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for acknowledging the fact that we have now moved from a situation where the proposed intervention area, which comprised 900,000 premises across rural Ireland, is now down to 542,000 premises. The European Commission has been kept fully updated on an ongoing basis on all of this. It is fully conscious of every aspect of this, from the pre-notification decision that was made in July 2015. It is being kept fully information throughout this process.

I wish to address an issue that has been raised by a number of people. It has been said that we do not have a competitive process because there are only two bidders in it. I will cite this example again. If one is building a one-off house in rural Ireland, one would probably go to one's neighbour to price the cost of it and get a second price for it, and if a similar house had been built in another part of the country, one would ask the owner of that house how much they paid for the construction of it. That is what we have done here. We have two competitive bidders in the process. We also have independent advice on the likely cost. We know what the indicative cost of this will be, the level of State support that is required and what will be the bids that come in for it. We have a very competitive process. I, as Minister, am not going to undermine this. A predecessor of mine is still involved and named, and my Department is still named, in legal cases that are taking place in the courts.

I am not going to go down that road. I am keeping a watching brief over this. There are specialist teams involved with this on a day to day basis and I believe the project, once the contract is signed, will deliver far more quickly than people expect. Further, it will deliver not just for the next five or ten years but for the next 25 years.

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