Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Last week at the Committee of Public Accounts I raised the issue of the national broadband plan. There are now significant concerns as to how the process to date has been managed, whether the awarding of the contract, if we get to that stage, will have been done in the best manner possible and whether the State will get the best possible deal. We know there will have been no competitive tendering for what is one of the largest and potentially most lucrative communications infrastructure projects in the country to date. Just last week, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission was scathing about the potential monopoly within the waste sector, yet here we are in this process with only one bidder. The remaining bidding consortium has changed so fundamentally from the initial bid that it is almost unrecognisable from the entity which first entered the process. We had Eir and SIRO exit the process, while Enet remained as the leader of the remaining consortium. In July of this year, SSE pulled out of the consortium. Enet replaced SSE with the State-backed Irish Infrastructure Fund, yet the consortium continued to morph and just last month it emerged that Enet is no longer leading the consortium but is now a partner alongside other companies, including Actavo, formerly known as Siteserv. Enet, the original bidder, is therefore now only one part of the consortium, which is now led by a private investment firm, Granahan McCourt.

Surely the Taoiseach has concerns about this process and the substantial changes that have occurred within the bidding process since it was first launched. He must be concerned about the links that will inevitably be drawn between the awarding of previous controversial contracts and some of the same personnel involved in this consortium. After all, Fine Gael was in government when the Irish Water contracts were awarded to a subsidiary of Siteserv, which is now the subject of a commission of investigation.

Fine Gael was in government when the second mobile phone licence was awarded to Esat which then became the subject of the Moriarty tribunal. It is now looking like Fine Gael will be in government when the national broadband plan contract is awarded to a consortium in which the same high profile businesspeople are involved. It is vital that the process for awarding the tender be above reproach. Would it not be better and more pertinent to ask the questions now, before any contract is awarded, in order to make sure there is absolute public confidence in both the process and the outcome? My questions are as follows. Is the Taoiseach satisfied that the bidding process, in which only one bidder is involved, will deliver broadband and best value for money? Does he have concerns about the sustainability of the remainder of the consortium, given that it has changed so much since it entered the process? How stable will it be into the future? Is the Taoiseach satisfied that the money spent on the process thus far has achieved the desired outcome?

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