I recognise there is huge and growing demand for fibre broadband across Ireland, much more than there was two years ago due to the pandemic. Everybody would like it tomorrow. It is a seven-year contract to connect 540,000 homes. We are two years in so there are five years left. A proportion of those homes are due to be connected in years 6 and 7, that is, 2025 and 2026. I can understand that people will be disappointed if they are in an area that is due in 2025 or 2026. That is not true of the whole of Mayo. A tota…

I understand there were multiple bidders in the process whereby the contract was awarded during the previous Administration. Finally, there was only one bidder because the other bidders dropped out and the contract was awarded to NBI. The terms of that contract stated NBI had to provide €100 million of investment as part of its investment in the project and a total of €175 million would be required over time. That €100 million did come in, plus another €20 million in the last two months. We are now at €120 million …

I am happy that NBI is fit for purpose and has the ability and the money for this project.

I continue to facilitate meetings all the time with and between Eir and NBI. I look at whatever regulatory questions they have. I meet with them and ask what they want the Government to do differently. I analyse what they are doing and look at their reports. I am putting significant focus and energy into this and I am optimistic we will get this to work.

I understand exactly what NBI and Eir's respective positions are. NBI says it wants more autonomy in how it works. If it puts cable through a duct which is blocked, it does not want to have to ask Eir for permission to unblock that duct. The irony NBI points out is that the company dealing with the blocking of the ducts is often the same as the subcontractor being used by Eir at the same time. Some paperwork goes back and forth and the same crew carries out the works. It has found that the duct network----

Is there a time limit?

The sums of money are accurate. There is some misunderstanding on the description of the investment. A private-equity investor considers all of his or her investments are equity, whether they are pure shareholding or pure debt. In the case of the funding model for NBI or the investment model, this was agreed in the contract. It is funded with 12% interest loans, but they are shareholder loans. They are not the type of loans one might imagine. If one was to lend money to somebody, one would expect to see a repayment…

I am happy to clear this up. The project information memorandum for any Government contracts says that the investors pay their own bid costs. Indeed, the process of the bid went on for a number of years. It would have involved many millions of euro of investment and when the company won the bid and set up, it repaid the costs of the bid from the investors' own capital back to those same investors again, in proportion to the amounts of money they had spent. It is the repayment of expenses. It comes out of money put …

The Deputy would have to ask them. This was the agreed investment structure from 2019. If they are international investors, it may suit their tax treatment in the jurisdictions in which they live. I do not know. Certainly, we got Ernst & Young to examine the investments and comment on the risk profile, which was similar to the investors having bought shares. It was acceptable at the time to people who signed the contract in 2019 and now my job as Minister of State is to ensure the terms of the contract are met and …

There is a complex corporate structure to this, as there is with any multibillion euro contract. David McCourt-controlled companies were the ones that led during the bid. The other investors were putting up the money at a later stage, so it is natural that many of the costs of the bid were attributable to a company controlled by him. I understand the Deputy's question on how a company set up recently before the bid was awarded can be due to recover the costs. I would have to consult with the lawyers and see about t…

The ownership and the control of NBI are very specifically detailed in the contract. Ownership is defined there and control is defined there. NBI, if the Deputy is wondering about the dividends, is not a profitable company. It starts to make money when it connects a lot of people. Until a lot of homes are being connected, it will not be in profit. Metallah Limited is the holding company. NBI Infrastructure DAC, which is party to the project agreement with the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications…

I will apply all the penalties that are due.

As the Deputy said, it was in 2019 that this contract was agreed and signed and it precedes me, but I understand that there were multiple bidders and then a particular company structure was set up to be the vehicle or entity that signed the deal with the Government. I do not know if the Deputy is wondering whether there is something untoward about that or there was something wrong, or that the bidder should have been of exactly the same name as the company that signed the contract at the end. I think the latter is …

I think there is a discrepancy between the name of who was bidding and whose name was on the contract.

This process was agreed with the advisers at the time. The Deputy is not bringing this to my attention for the first time. Rather than say something that is inaccurate on something that is a very complex process, I will give Deputy Duncan Smith an answer in written form if that is all right.

That is a reasonable question. That information is on the website today. I looked at it a while ago and that has been rectified. If it was not on it, it is there now. I met the board, first at a virtual meeting and then at a physical meeting where I actually met all of them. Deputy Duncan Smith is correct. All of the names of the people on the board have to be published and have to be known.

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…

Dublin is not excluded from the NBP. The NBP applies to anyone who cannot get 30 Mbps of broadband from a commercial provider, and that certainly applies to places such as Glencullen and Stepaside, and even more so in Fingal, north County Dublin. According to the figures in front of me, 3,604 premises in Dublin are under construction at the moment as part of the national broadband plan. Moreover, SIRO is quite active in those areas, working with the ESB and Vodafone. It has passed 400,000 homes and will connect a f…

The Deputy spoke about the differences between people's nominal broadband speeds and what they actually get, and the fact that, if many people suddenly start to work from home, the service will degrade for everybody because they are sharing a pipe at some point upstream. That is a real concern and we are working on it. Any Deputy who wants to meet the head of the national broadband plan in the Department can do so and can go through any issues he or she has. That offer always stands. The Deputy went on to speak abo…

I bow to the Deputy's experience. I am sure she was deeply involved in the process and knows a lot about what was involved and what the arguments were regarding what kind of contract there should have been. As I said, however, the contract has been signed and I have to execute it. The major investors in NBI are Granahan McCourt, the Tetra Corporation, Oak Hill Advisors and Twin Point Capital, along with members of the senior management team of NBI and some smaller investors. They constitute the major investors-----