Mr. Tom Gillen:

It is not often understood by customers that we work on what is called a fully collateralised market, which means that before we buy anything we have to put the money upfront. The last time I looked at this, our company, Energia, had put up €80 million as a security deposit with all the other companies just to enable us to trade. We have never missed a payment even by a day.

We as suppliers are at the end of a very long supply chain. We have to pay our taxes, the PSO levies, the new system charges, and our costs. I have asked numerous times if that could be shared among industry but that has never happened. That is the reason Energia is focused on credit because we have to pay everything from our sales and the security deposits are significant. If a customer, be it a domestic or large industry customer, does not pay us, we still have to pay everyone else.