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

I will go back over a little of the history of this project. In July 2015 the former Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Alex White, engaged in a consultative process on what the model should be. He considered a number of options, including a public utility, as Deputy Howlin is advocating today. He also considered an option in which the State would own the asset throughout and there would only be a concession for five years. A commercial stimulus, gap-funded model was also considered, as was a concessionaire agreement, under which ownership would revert to the State after 25 years. The then Minister ruled out a public utility, a State-owned asset which would be owned throughout the process, and narrowed down the options to either the commercial stimulus model or the model under which there would be a reversion to the State after 25 years. That, in turn, was referred to an ownership sub-group which consisted of the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA; NewERA; the Department of Finance and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, with which Deputy Howlin is very familiar. KPMG Group was adviser to the group. A very detailed evaluation followed the public consultation that had occurred on the model that was to be picked. In 2016 the then Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Naughten, came back to the Government and recommended that we follow the commercial stimulus model. The reason was that it would be better on cost and non-cost grounds and because of how the capacity of the add-on to the existing privately owned network could best be delivered to the advantage of those who would use it with the least risk to the State. As the reports have been published, people can view how the decision was taken.

Far from it being an ideological view of Fine Gael, as the Labour Party seeks to portray it, it was an iterative process in which various options were considered. They included the wholly-owned public utility model, the gap-funded model, the concessionaire agreement and so on and a decision was made that the best option was to go with the so-called gap-funded model which would seek to stimulate the commercial sector to do something that it was not otherwise going to do.

Deputy Howlin said the then Minister unilaterally removed 300,000 premises from the process. The reality is that, if one is to go the State aid route, it must be on the basis that the commercial sector is not willing to deliver.

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