Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his reply. The reality is there are two main reasons for the escalation of costs. One is that Eir was allowed to cherry-pick in 2017 and that banjaxed the process and made it more expensive to service the remaining 500,000 premises. The second reason is that the Government is going with a bidder that has no infrastructure and does not own poles or a yard of ducting in the State. There are two providers that do. I do not hold any candle for either provider and would prefer for the ESB to have the contract from an ideological and practical point of view because that way we would have some democratic control. We are going with a provider without any infrastructure and it is questionable if it has the money. We are told there are letters of comfort from other investors saying that they can come up with the cash but this is a highly risky process.

I take on board the fact that Eir originally bid a much higher price but it is now saying that this can be done for a subsidy of €1 billion. At the very least, that needs to be probed further by Government and there should be engagement between Eir and Department officials. I ask the Minister to do that.

On the issue of state aid, the former Minister told me that the Government had to allow Eir to roll out broadband to those 240,000 premises, which then became 300,000. At the committee meeting last night, I asked the Minister's senior officials for a copy of the case that was put to the European Commission to explain to the Commission that Eir was being allowed to doughnut every circle of houses, village or cluster of houses and, in the process, completely derail the rest of the project. I also requested a copy of the instructions received back and the order from the European Commission saying Eir could not go ahead. I would like to see those.

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