Richard Bruton has finally conceded that the private investor partners in the National Broadband Plan are only fronting up just over €200million in cash.
The Minister for Communications has made the admission this afternoon that their investment will be €220million, after repeated calls for the sum to be revealed.
There was huge anger when it emerged last week that the figure would be in the region of €200million.
Meanwhile, the taxpayer will be caught on the hook for a whopping €3billion.
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Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed, let the cat out of the bag last wednesday on Clare FM when he said the investment from Granahan McCourt would be around €200million.
Before facing opposition politicians at the Oireachtas Communications Committee later this afternoon, Mr Bruton made his big reveal on RTE’s News at One.
“I’ll say at the outset, this is a really important investment for people living in rural Ireland, it’s 1.1million people that the private sector will not deliver for, so we have taken on to provide State aid to allow that happen.
“So the company that will be responsible for €2.4billion of the cost of designing, building and operating this scheme over 25 years - they have to meet that from initial equity and from user fees - and given the concerns from Oireachtas members I asked my officials to engage with the bidder (Granahan McCourt) and the bidder has agreed to reveal the figure, which is €220million in initial equity and working capital.”
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Much, if not all, of the €2.4billion Mr Bruton is talking about that Granahan McCourt will eventually pump in to the project will come from customer charges and profits.
Mr Bruton is insisting that the Government has no intention of scrapping the Granahan McCourt deal and starting from scratch.
He has faced calls from the opposition parties to ditch the current bidder and consider other options, such as keeping it all in public ownership.
“I’m not going to make 1.1million people wait.
“We’ve examined this and we’ve found that this is the cheapest and least risky way.”
