Mr. Paul McGowan:

I will address those points on two fronts and perhaps Mr. Garrett Blayney might follow up. In regard to gas and electricity, it is probably worth noting that when we started regulating both of those industries, particularly electricity, they had suffered from decades of under-investment. During the past decade or more there was massive investment in the electricity infrastructure in order to bring it up to the standard that is required in a modern economy. That has been a driver for cost increases, undoubtedly, in the energy area. The second point is that, unlike water, the price of energy is very much driven by the price of fuel, predominantly gas, in international markets. That is completely outside the control of the State or the regulator. We are price takers. We have to accept the international wholesale price for gas, for example, which in the case of Ireland is pretty much set in Great Britain at what is called the national balancing point, which is its wholesale market. Those costs have been rising over the years. We have investigated and looked at the costs of delivering both the capital investment and operating expenditure of Bord Gáis and the ESB and the backdrop to that has been rising fuel prices and a massive investment programme in order to bring both electricity and gas networks up to international standards and, for example, to ensure that the amount of minutes lost by customers who are attached to the electricity network has decreased since we took over as regulator. That probably reflects the level of investment that was necessary to improve the overall system.