Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In any tender process the State will eventually pick just one provider. There will be a process wherein different tenders will be evaluated. That is always the case. In the area of telecoms it is not exceptional to end up with just one tender. It has happened in other areas. The State has taken huge precautions to evaluate and match stride for stride the costs and all of the different elements that have evolved. There is very detailed knowledge of the way the process has developed. It has been designed to protect the taxpayer in terms of its exposure and in order that the process will provide the best value. However, at the end of the day, the matter will have to be decided after the final evaluations have been carried out. Independent evaluations are being carried out in looking at the robustness of the technology, value for money, governance and so on. It will all be done very carefully.

The State infrastructure, namely, the metropolitan area networks, MANs, and other means of access are being used under the plan. The bidder has changed, but in all cases the bidder had to go through the various pre-qualification tests. When the make-up of the bidder changed, the pre-qualification tests had to be gone through again.

See this speech in context