Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I find that hard to understand. Earlier I heard the Taoiseach respond to a question about the ultimate value of the contract. There has been an effort by the Minister and the Taoiseach to suggest that after 25 years the only value that will accrue for this massive State investment will be the value of the fibre optic cable. That fails to recognise the tremendous amount of money that will be spent in marketing, connecting and building a customer base that is projected to comprise 400,000 customers after the 25-year period. The asset in question here is the value of that connection and monopoly access to that pool of customers and its revenue-generating capacity. As the Minister has indicated in this House, each of those customers will pay €30 per month. It does not take a mathematician to work out the value of that. I do not see any true recognition of what might be referred to as the soft asset, that is, the customer pool, in any of the communications of the Department, the Minister or the Taoiseach.

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