Sir – The Government appears to have availed of the Phil Hogan controversy to slip out the National Broadband Plan (NBP) contract on Tuesday. It is hard to understand why it bothered as the contract spans 50 weighty files of which only 21 are not fully or partly redacted.
Given that the contract could require €3 billion from taxpayers and runs to about 2,000 pages, the cost per page (before redactions) works out at about €1.5 million per page.
Hopefully, the NBP proves to be better value for money than this contract, which will cost €15 million a year for decades to supervise and, by virtue of its length and longevity, is likely to become a legal minefield and a paradise for lawyers. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN FLANAGAN,
READ SOME MORE
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.