Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

In his first question, the Deputy talked about the State, the taxpayer or the Government being on the hook for large payments, and said that the service not being delivered was the fear. That is absolutely a fear with any infrastructure project. That is probably the idea that those who drafted or agreed the contract had in mind to use a private company to subcontract it out so that the risk would be transferred. The company only receives money when it does things. There were some subsidy payments for setting up the network originally and for various milestones met and now they only get money when they connect homes. That is how the risk is reduced. They have a big incentive to connect as many homes as possible. When they connect a home they get a subsidy payment but they also get payment for anybody who connects to the network - they get a revenue stream. They have an incentive, not only to get the fibre to go past people's homes but also to get them to take up the service.

We have paid out €177.5 million in subsidy so far. The maximum subsidy we have agreed to pay out is €2.1 billion. The Deputy can see that is the proportion spent so far. We have another €480 million in contingency funds, which was in the budget but not in the contract. The company has no entitlement to that but the Government has that in its budget if it needs to find some other way if it comes across unforeseen problems or for some reason it needs extra money on the project.

The Deputy also asked whether the investors are in this for the long haul. NBI can decide that it wants to bring in new investors with the consent of the Minister. It can come back to the Department stating that it wants to fund itself with longer term investment and it wants to go for lower interest longer term investors.

If it wants to do that, we will examine that and give it consent if it thinks it is a good idea. That is certainly possible but it has not yet come to us with anything.

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