Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

On the gas side, the terms and conditions around attracting exploration and development in the offshore would be a policy matter and the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources has recently set out a new policy framework around that. While it is a matter for the Minister, I believe there would be challenges to trying to impose special conditions around pricing in respect of competition or state aid law for what is a commodity that is traded on an international market. However, from our perspective as regulators, we can try to ensure that if there are additional finds, they will come ashore in Ireland to give us the security of supply benefit. We are working on a new entry regime that would be designed to facilitate or give some incentive to future offshore developers to bring gas onshore to Ireland. Where that could ultimately benefit the market in terms of price would be if we had a sufficiently significant offshore industry or production industry such that Ireland became a net exporter. Corrib gas is welcome. It brings circa 60% of our gas needs for the next ten years but certainly Ireland will not be an exporter. If there were significant additional finds and we did become an exporter, that is where we might begin to see the price impact in our market. Our job as a regulator, in terms of the conditions for which those potential developers might enter our market, is to ensure we facilitate such entry.