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

It is unusual. It does not happen every day but that does not mean one automatically assumes that the critique, which is the job of critics, is always right.

On the issue of the ownership model, the Senator's analogy might lead him astray. We are not asking someone to build us a property that we are going to rent. We are asking someone to lay fibre on rented poles and to operate the fibre network thereafter. We do not want, in 25 years, to have to replace the fibre. We want it to stand on its own two feet. This goes back to the Eircom decision. Senator Ronan Mullen does not like it, with some considerable justification. We sold the crown jewels, or whatever one likes to call them, so the network is not in private ownership. It is working well but it is a privately owned network. We want to extend it to reach 1.1 million people. We want it to continue to work on the very same basis as it would for an urban dweller, such that customers would have the same connection charge and receive the same service and options. That is what we are giving state aid to achieve. We are not seeking to run a company to create a new telecommunications company that is running just at the margins of the core. There is no sense in the State running just at the edge of the system.We want the system to be integrated and to be capable of supporting itself in the long term. We also want those who have it to continue to reinvest in its service. That is the backdrop to why the ownership model was chosen.

This company cannot just switch off the system and walk away because if it fails to complete it, the system will revert to the State. At that point, we will have what we paid for. If it is halfway through, half of all of the homes will be passed and the connections that have taken it up will be made. We will have an asset at that point and we will have paid for the elements the company has delivered, so we will not be stranded. This is a valuable network. If it is fully built, it will obviously achieve the objective we all set but even if it is only half built, it will have delivered to significant parts of the country. That light will not go out because the company fails to move ahead.

The issue of very remote premises is the reason we have left flexibility in the model. This will allow the company to deliver 2% and, indeed, more than that on our say so. Once it hits the quality mark, it can deliver 2% by wireless other than by means of fibre. We have built in that flexibility and we do not anticipate that those more remote homes will have to pay extra because of that flexibility.

I agree with Senator Lombard. If we abandon or delay this and go back to the drawing board, it will be 37 months before the State company, the ESB or whatever entity is involved, comes along. We know a great deal about the ESB's capacity because it was a player in this tendering process. It is not as if it has some magic formula and can suddenly deliver this in a cheaper way than when it was involved in the tendering process previously. Let us be objective about the evaluation. These are not new ideas; they were evaluated at the beginning, in the middle and at the end. They are not ideas that are coming-----