We will now deal with Leaders' Questions, as agreed. I remind leaders and the Minister that we are running somewhat late and will be going to midnight. I ask all Members to observe the three-minute and one-minute rule. I call Deputy Martin.

I have in my hands the massive bundle of documentation sent to us at 1.55 p.m. today about the national broadband plan. That illustrates the sharp practice of Government in its management and handling of this project from the start and its attempts to spin its way out of any serious questions or accountability about the project itself. None of this was produced yesterday. Very little of the detail in this documentation was released yesterday. The Government was definitely endeavouring to get out of Leaders' Questions without the detail of this documentation being in the public domain. The wider issue is that if one looks at the correspondence from the Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to the Government and the Minister, he states:

In terms of the long-term sustainability of the project, I believe that there are unprecedented risks to the Exchequer posed by this proposed project. The Government is being asked to commit up to €3 billion of Exchequer funding - up to €2.275 billion of which will be required by 2026 - in an area where technology is rapidly changing and where we face a number of significant risks to the successful completion of the project.

The correspondence continues:

As against this €3 billion Exchequer investment that is at risk, the private sector operator is only risking [REDACTED] of their own funds.

How much?

The correspondence continues:

I note that by 2028, the private operator is projected to have received [REDACTED] in dividends and interest, together with a repayment of [REDACTED] of the initial share capital, while the State will have spent up to €2.44 billion by that stage. In effect, the private operator will have all of their monies paid back while the Exchequer could have paid out almost [€2.5 billion]. And this is before significant connections have been made by service providers.

What is the upfront contribution of the remaining bidder to this project? Why will the Minister not be fully transparent and give us that figure now? Why is the State taking all of the risk? It is a very basic question because the Secretary General and his officials raised questions about the viability of the plan and the capacity of the bidder to deliver it. Having had many missed targets in the past seven years, we could be facing more missed targets. There is a complete lack of confidence in the documentation about the capacity of the remaining bidder to deliver.

Questions were raised about the lack of competition given that there was only one remaining bidder. Given that the Minister made an announcement yesterday about the preferred tenderer, will this contract ever be signed, considering the huge and enormous questions that have been raised by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and which have been poorly responded to in the correspondence from the line Department. Why is the Government so dismissive of the concerns of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform? Why the absence of any robust counter-response from the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform who I listened to on RTÉ Radio 1 earlier? There is an absence of a robust response to the concerns of his Secretary General and the officials in his Department who clearly believe that the Government has handled the management of this tendering process very badly.

At every stage in this I signalled that I would be open to providing documentation and answering questions, and that will be true today, tomorrow or whenever the House provides.

The Minister did not say that this morning.

This is a major decision to ensure that rural Ireland, which includes 1.1 million people, has equal access to a technology that is going to transform our lives. It is already transforming our lives and it will make a huge impact on rural communities. We as a Government are not willing to see rural Ireland left behind and become second-class citizens-----

That is a first.

-----in respect of a technology that is crucial to its future.

Let me say clearly to Deputy Martin that we did not dismiss the evidence or information presented by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. We evaluated every one of those concerns very carefully and spent hours of evaluation on each one. I will take them in turn. In respect of costs, we have looked in detail at the cost of alternatives. Several alternatives were evaluated and none of them offered the opportunity of delivering these objectives at a lower cost; indeed, on the contrary, they would have taken more time and greater cost.

We considered the benefits available. This clearly provides more benefits than cost, and not only that, as the conservative basis on which cost-benefit analysis has to be done excluded most of the benefits of broadband, for example, opportunities in the future to access health services and education online, using cloud-based services and so on. These are the aspects that make it beneficial. We have carefully considered the risks and have managed them in a way that protects the State and we are using this model to ensure that at the end of this we are not left with an asset that could not be of value to the State. We are doing this, building off the existing network, using that model, renting rather than investing in creating a separate company and ensuring the company will be viable at the end, and this will continue to provide service not just for the 25 years during which we will deliver support but for another ten years beyond that.

In respect of the equity and dividends, of course an equity is being provided here.

What is it?

That is confidential within the contracts and that will be a matter we will have to nail down at the contract stage to show the documentation for the equity that is being put in. The equity is commensurate with the sort of revenue that this project will generate. This equity is entirely at risk. Many on the benches opposite and in the media have asked what would happen if the take-up was not as high as might be projected. The truth is that any failure in respect of the take-up will fall on that equity investor. It will be at its risk if that fails to transpire. This will be an important investment in rural Ireland. We have considered all the alternatives. This is the best technology delivered at the cheapest cost with the minimum risk to the State and it is an investment that we believe rural Ireland deserves.

That is not what the Minister's officials said.

Rural Ireland has been waiting for a long time for high-speed connectivity. Fine Gael promised it in 2012. Every single promise it made was delayed and not honoured.

There was an alternative in the document. The Minister is wrong to say he considered every alternative. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform said very clearly that plan B would be:

(ii) Establishing a State entity (whether new or within an existing body) charged with responsibility for managing any alternative State intervention/s - which would ultimately take over the management of the short-term intervention/s and establish more long-term solution/s to address all premises.

That is a paragraph in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform memorandum. The Department knows all about EU state aid rules so the Minister should not pull the spin on us that his Department got some advice somewhere-----

From the Attorney General.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform knows all about state aid rules and it is saying that there is an established mechanism by which the State could have done this differently and more effectively for the people in rural Ireland and for the taxpayer.

How much equity is the remaining consortium putting up? There is no other bidder.

It is not commercially sensitive.

It is not commercially sensitive material. Why is the Secretary General going out of his way to say the State is taking all the risk and that the remaining bidder is only putting up so much? How much is that?

A pig in a poke.

Is there a problem with the financial standing of the company? Has the company the wherewithal to take sufficient risk upfront in the early stages of this project? Why is the State taking almost 90% of it?

The capacity of the company has been carefully vetted at every stage and will continue to be vetted as we finalise the contracts and it will have to show the delivery of the equity to which it has committed.

Is the Minister that sure?

It has always been clear that we could set up an independent State body and roll out an alternative but if Deputy Martin reads the detail of what the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform was proposing, it was to provide 1,800 premises with wireless broadband.

The Minister said all along he could not do that.

This is going back to the approach of not delivering fibre to the premises but instead delivering it to a limited number of locations. That is not the commitment that the Deputy or I want.

The Minister said he could not make another contract under State aid rules.

While the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has a huge duty to challenge and that is its job, the Deputy and I know, as former Ministers for Education, that the Department of Finance challenged and opposed the idea of free second level education but few now would say that was a bad decision.

We owned it. We did not give it away.

The Deputy's party rightly takes pride in the fact that it was a proper decision and it was taken for courageous reasons because we wanted to ensure that everyone got an equal opportunity.

We did not give it away.

To automatically have a bidding process with one bidder.

We did not outsource it to the private sector.

Or to Boston.

In the same way this is a decision being taken by the Government to ensure that the people of rural Ireland-----

Are the Deputies opposite against rural Ireland? Do they want it or not?

-----get the same equal opportunity to use modern technologies as their urban colleagues.

They are against rural Ireland. We want broadband in rural Ireland.

The Minister has a right to be heard.

I am all for broadband in rural Ireland.

So are we but the Government cannot deliver it.

Whether a Member is a Deputy or a Minister, he or she will be treated-----

It will take another ten years. Then Deputy Ring will be the longest serving Member if it ever goes to Mayo.

Whether a Member is a Deputy or a Minister, he or she will be treated the same way by me and that includes the Minister for Community and Rural Affairs, Deputy Ring.

After decades of neglect of rural Ireland, having asset-stripped rural Ireland and having delivered one broken promise after another, now on the eve of an election, the Government pulls what I can only describe as a cynical political stunt - a confidence trick. The documentation, which is voluminous and which it will take some to read in its totality, reflects that there is a fundamental question mark around the ability of the preferred bidder to deliver the rural broadband that we all seek.

It sets out the best case scenario, which is that the Minister's very expensive plan goes ahead, expenditure will be re-profiled and local authority social housing, the Tralee wastewater network, Kilkenny regional water supply scheme, the Sligo western distributor road, the Killaloe bypass, the Dunkettle interchange, 18 primary schools, new ambulance bases, and so on and so forth will be taken off the table.

Even in the best case scenario, should this proceed, the Government will give with one hand to rural Ireland and take away with the other. There is a worst case scenario wherein billions of euro in taxpayers' money gets poured down a black hole, we are left with what amounts to a very expensive white elephant and rural Ireland is still left without the broadband it needs. I said many times to the Taoiseach - and it is unfortunate that he is not here - that the State was in a very weak position because of the shambles that the Government has overseen and that it was Granahan McCourt that held all of the cards. It seems now, through this documentation, that my position has been vindicated.

I invite the Minister to please tell us the figures. We know that the taxpayer is to have skin in the game to the tune of €3 billion. What is the figure for Granahan McCourt? What is the liability for that private equity firm? How is it that the documentation, although redacted, insinuates that the sum involved is a fraction of the €3 billion that the taxpayer will have to cough up? I do not accept that the Minister cannot name the figure. I would be more alarmed, were that possible, if he was proposing, notwithstanding the very clear advice given by the Department, to advance while not knowing or maybe not even caring, what stake the private equity investor proposes to provide. The Minister should name the figure and tell us. It is €3 billion of taxpayer's money but how much private money is going into this venture?

Let me be very clear that this company has proven experience and passed all of the pre-qualification tests. This company has built 16 greenfield telecommunication operations and-----

This company has changed so many times-----

-----has rolled out 24 national telecommunication infrastructure projects. It has experienced executives who held senior positions in both Irish and international telecommunications companies. It will use the very same subcontractors that each of the other providers rolling out broadband services use.

It will not use the ESB.

This is a robust bid.

What is it bringing to the table?

In terms of the white elephant allegation, we have built in very careful contract terms. There will be very close governance of this company. There will be clawbacks should it be more profitable than expected. Some people fear it will be more profitable than is projected and if that occurs, there will be clawbacks to protect the taxpayer. If the take-up is less than anticipated, the company will carry the risk. That is why its equity is at stake in this.

How much?

In terms of the sum of the equity involved, I am not going to prejudice the final signing off on a contract for a project for which we have waited a very considerable time by revealing a figure that, as Deputies can see from the redacted documents, is confidential.

Why?

This is a project for which people in rural Ireland have waited a long time. We have evaluated it extremely carefully, with 800 hours spent by officials in my Department with the various bidders to ensure that we are getting best value in this project. The goal of this project is to provide access for 1.1 million people, comprising 68% of the farms in this country, 100,000 small businesses and 600 schools. We want to ensure that this valuable part of our community, amounting to almost 25%, gets access to the same high-speed broadband that is being provided now by private investment in our urban and suburban areas. The truth is that when we privatised Telecom Éireann-----

"We" did not privatise it-----

-----we left broadband provision up to the commercial world but it is not happening for a quarter of our people. That is why the State must intervene and provide substantial State support for it to happen. The idea of comparing our level of support for a service that is not economic to provide by commercial operators with the equity being put in is a false comparison. We have to put in this support so that this community will be included. That is why there is a substantial sum involved, albeit spread over 25 years, to secure this valuable infrastructure and to deliver to people around rural Ireland.

The Minister is very coy but he does not display the same reticence in naming the figure for the taxpayer, with €3 billion rolling off his tongue. He does not have to convince anyone in this Chamber or beyond of the need for rural broadband; far from it. I remind him that officials in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform - and I understand their concerns were also held by other officials - said that there is a question mark around the deliverability of the project. Let us just say that out loud. The Minister is speaking as though this is a certainty but the history of this debacle is that there is anything but certainty around the delivery of rural broadband, bar the certainty that, as he said, 25% of our people do not have access to it.

I do not doubt for a second that the preferred bidder has considerable expertise. I am not questioning that. I am not questioning the fact that it has been involved in very big projects; no doubt it has been but this is the first occasion on which it will acquire €3 billion of taxpayers' money. On that basis, if this is to have any credibility at all, particularly given that its credibility has been deemed highly questionable by very informed persons, the Minister needs to state on the public record the quantum of money involved. How much? What fraction of €3 billion is going to be advanced by way of private money?

Let me be very clear - this company will not get €3 billion. That is a completely distorted way of presenting this. We are employing this company to design, build and operate-----

And own-----

The company will own it.

It will own the infrastructure.

-----the roll-out of fibre which will be placed on rented poles, by and large. It will be built on the existing network. That is designed to minimise the cost to the Exchequer. That will provide a resource, which the company will sell on, as a wholesaler, to retailers to provide service to those who connect to it. This is the State deciding that it needs an infrastructure to include rural Ireland. We are providing the money but it will only be provided as the company builds it out. The company will not get paid until it shows that the 146,000 km is rolled out. We have ensured that we are capping our risk. We believe that we will not have to pay all of the €3 billion because we have various elements where we can get clawbacks or not have to incur a cost, and they are built into the programme. Of course, for transparency reasons, we have shown the full cost of the potential exposure. We believe that this is crucial if we want to ensure that there is equal opportunity.

How much private money is involved?

There is no cheaper way and no better technology than this to provide the sort of service that the Deputy wants to see.

Deputies, please.

Let me say one last thing. The Deputy appears to favour the concession model, whereby this would revert to the State at the end of the period. In terms of the assessment of the deliverability of this project, that was assessed as being a far greater risk than the model we are now delivering.

How much private money? Is it €500 million? Is it €100 million?

We will now move on to the Independents 4 Change and Deputy Joan Collins, who has three minutes.