Ms Ellvena Graham:

I will take the last question first on meeting the challenges of the expanding economy. The Senator is right that we need infrastructure. There is no doubt. If one looks at what the country is doing around foreign direct investment, it is a good example. Foreign companies are coming into Ireland. Very often they ask how much of our energy is produced from renewable sources. That is one of the drivers. If we want to continue to expand our economy, we must demonstrate that we are serious about meeting our decarbonisation and, indeed, climate change targets. We need the infrastructure. I am from Northern Ireland, as the members know, and I see businesses North and South and the absolute need to have strong interconnections between North and South. Businesses in the North in particular need that. I am a supporter of building good infrastructure. It is similar to what we did with the roads many years ago here in Ireland. It is the same type of thing that we are trying to do again. I understand the opposition to infrastructure because, as the Senator says, a lot of people do not want anything anywhere near them. However, if we want to progress as a modern economy, we will have to continue to develop and build out our infrastructure. We will need to keep pushing ahead with our renewables.

The Senator asked about energy prices, which is certainly something everyone has asked me about since I took on the role. The ESB has reduced the price of electricity in the last two years. One of the things I thought was the right thing to do was to reduce the price of electricity at the start of the winter. That allowed customers to benefit when there was high peak usage over the winter months. However, the cost of electricity is made up of a number of things, as the Senator knows. It is not just the networks or the fuel; there are a number of different elements affecting the price. We will continue to work to take down the price of electricity. In my time on the board, we have looked at the ESB's cost base and reduced it since 2010 by more than €250 million. The costs are coming down and the cost of electricity is coming down, but at the same time we have to invest in the networks. We have invested €6 billion there in the last ten years. We are investing in renewables and bringing wind farms online, with the networks having to be upgraded to accommodate that process. It is a balancing act, but we are doing our very best to reduce the cost of electricity.