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

The SSE-Enet, Granahan McCourt and John Laing plc consortium is an expert group with in-depth international experience across the telecoms, engineering and infrastructure sectors in Ireland and across the globe. It was one of three bidders which successfully passed the pre-qualification stage of the national broadband plan. During the pre-qualification phase the Department evaluated the eligibility, economic and financial standing and technical and professional capability of each bidder to provide the services required. The pre-qualification process was designed to assess the suitability of a bidder to deliver the national broadband plan contract requirements.

SSE is Ireland's second largest energy utility and a leading developer and investor in cleaner energy infrastructure. Its UK parent is the largest energy utility provider in the UK. SSE is an expert in energy infrastructure and has significant engineering knowledge. In the UK, SSE has approximately 15 years experience in the telecoms and broadband industries where it has developed and operates almost 14,000 km of high capacity fibre optic networks.

Enet has operated the metropolitan access networks, MANs, on behalf of my Department since 2004. The MANs are State owned open-access fibre networks in 94 regional towns and cities. Enet operates as a wholesale provider of duct and sub-duct rental, dark fibre, managed services and co-location on the MANs network. Separately, Enet has spent 13 years building up both a fibre and wireless infrastructure in Ireland, which covers over 5,000 km of open access fibre, gigabit ethernet and SDH managed services.

Granahan McCourt Capital is a Dublin-based technology, media and telecommunications investment group. John Laing plc is an international business with long term experience in infrastructure roll-out, including public private partnerships in the UK, Europe, Asia Pacific and North America.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

As I stated, this consortium qualified in the initial stages of the procurement process and has robustly engaged with the national broadband plan specialist procurement team since then.

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