I was pleased to hear the Taoiseach say earlier that he would welcome consideration by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment of our national broadband plan and that any such consideration must be done in a timely manner, which I absolutely accept. I really want to support this deal. The more I look at it, however, the more I am left scratching my head wondering how a private developer can contribute €175 million in capital while we contribute between €2 billion and €3 billion, with the former ending up owning the asset. The Irish people are scratching their heads on this too. They just cannot get their heads around what we get from this. I have nothing against Mr. McCourt but he only has a small team. He does not have backup or big companies such as SSE behind him. The Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment has a lot of skills in this area. I saw it deliver the metropolitan area networks, MANs, whereby the Department itself did the build-out and brought in the contractors. I am scratching my head and asking how we might win over the public and sell to them a deal whereby we pay all the money and someone else gets ownership. I just cannot get beyond this-----

I thank the Deputy. His time is up.

-----and I think it will be difficult for the Government too. Can the deal be changed as we start to investigate it in the Oireachtas committee? What flexibility do we have if we do this digging, which we should do? What is the chance of our changing the deal, either on the ownership end or some other end? Someone said last night-----

The Deputy's time is up.

-----that the deal is legally tied down now but I do not believe that is the case. I think we have a moment for change here before we sign a contract. Can the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, confirm that this is the case?

Since the privatisation of Telecom Éireann, we have depended on the private sector to deliver high-speed broadband. This has been fine for 75% of the population but for 1.1 million people the private sector will not deliver. The Department engaged in an evaluation as to what the best way was to ensure we could provide that service. Very clearly, the best approach was for the State to provide 146,000 km of fibre by using the existing network of poles and ducts that are already in private ownership. This was the approach adopted. It was also clear that the best way to ensure that this network would be viable in the long term was to leave it to the private sector not only to design, build and operate but also to operate it in the long term without further recourse to State support. This company, at the end of the 25 years, will be a company with a turnover of €150 million. That is about one tenth of the size of Eir's turnover. It will be a relatively small company operating a network which required state aid to be put in place. We have evaluated the alternatives, every one of which is more expensive, riskier or does not deliver. Clearly, one cannot rewrite the competition rules. We have had a competition, we defined certain terms of that competition from the outset and we conducted the system on that basis. There are therefore fundamental constraints as to what alternatives one can look at-----

I thank the Minister. We cannot have a detailed debate on the matter. His time is up.

-----without starting afresh, abandoning this tender and starting a new procurement process.