Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My understanding is that each side will have six minutes as part of a dialogue with the Minister. I thank the Minister for outlining the importance of the national broadband plan. We have been hearing about it since 2012 and we know how important it is. The people who do not have broadband certainly know how important it is. My motivation throughout this entire debacle has been to try to ensure we get a contractor that can provide the necessary service to those 542,000 homes.

I want to understand the motivation of the bidder throughout its rather unusual interactions with the former Minister. I cannot understand the necessity for all the meetings, phone calls and private dinners. I am not raising any issue about the previous Minister on this, but I wonder what the motivation of the bidder was. I have been concerned about it for some time. Mr. Smyth, in his report, rather bizarrely looks at only one side of the equation. He seeks to understand whether some influence has been exerted, and concludes that there was no influence exerted, nor could there have been, because he accepts that at three private meetings at least no discussions took place about the national broadband plan. He relies on the statements of the bidder and the former Minister in that regard. I do not know whether that took the form of a questionnaire or whether he had face-to-face meetings with those concerned to establish the facts about that. Perhaps the Minister can advise us in that regard.

The Minister stated that, in the four tests used by Mr. Smyth, all appropriate guidelines and procedures were considered. I want to highlight one particular guideline. The communication protocol between the Department and external bidders sets out the procedure very clearly under two headings. Under the heading on canvassing, it sets out the prohibition that applies and states that direct or indirect canvassing by a bidder, consortium member, bidder member or their suppliers or advisers in relation to the project or the procurement, or any attempt to obtain information from any of the agents or employees of the Department, its political representatives or its appointed advisers concerning other bidders, or a solution to a final bid tender or procurement in general is prohibited. It then provides a remedy for such action, stating that any breach of the section will entitle the Department to immediately disqualify the bidder concerned.

If there was more than one bidder the Minister knows that its lawyers would be down in the courts now arguing that the remaining bidder, which has clearly breached canvassing rules, should be excluded from the process. Given that at least one of these dinner meetings in Mr. McCourt's home took place while the two previous bidders were in the race, it is astonishing that Mr. Smyth did not recognise a significant breach of the rules set out in the communication protocol. The same applies in respect of section 7 of that document, which deals with the separation of functions within the Department's divisional units. It states that it is recognised that the day-to-day functions of the Department, in carrying out its remit, may involve engagement with stakeholders who are bidders in the process. Mr. Smyth relies on that to suggest that some of the meetings were casual in nature. While that is the case, there were three meetings that were not and could not come under this heading. It then sets out the protocol to apply in respect of any such communications, namely, that officials in the Department will not at any time discuss the NBP procurement process outside the NBP team. We have direct proof that this happened.

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