Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I was pleased to hear the Taoiseach say earlier that he would welcome consideration by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment of our national broadband plan and that any such consideration must be done in a timely manner, which I absolutely accept. I really want to support this deal. The more I look at it, however, the more I am left scratching my head wondering how a private developer can contribute €175 million in capital while we contribute between €2 billion and €3 billion, with the former ending up owning the asset. The Irish people are scratching their heads on this too. They just cannot get their heads around what we get from this. I have nothing against Mr. McCourt but he only has a small team. He does not have backup or big companies such as SSE behind him. The Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment has a lot of skills in this area. I saw it deliver the metropolitan area networks, MANs, whereby the Department itself did the build-out and brought in the contractors. I am scratching my head and asking how we might win over the public and sell to them a deal whereby we pay all the money and someone else gets ownership. I just cannot get beyond this-----

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