There is a lot of money going into Irish communications providers at the moment. We are aware of a number of companies that are looking for tens of millions of investments.
In our experience, first quarter funding figures are usually high because of the backlog from the previous year. Pre-Christmas closing means deals often drift into January.
The figure is down somewhat from quarter one of 2005, but you have to remember there was a number of individual spectacular deals in the period including an 18 million investment in Irish Broadband. Overall we expect this year to be flat or even a bit better when compared to 2005.