Dr. Paul McGowan:

I will spread the replies around among my colleagues. I will start by answering a few of the specific questions. With regard to the oversight agreement, it is currently compliant with the code of practice as of 2009. We are currently working with the Department on the new code of practice for governance of State bodies to reach compliance by the end of this year. We have just come to the end of a gap analysis. We will then be in discussions with the Department as to what, if any, form of oversight agreement we would need. That will be clarified later this year. Our aim is that by the third quarter we will have identified, and hopefully have everything in place in terms of compliance. We will then carry out our own internal audit to make sure we are fully compliant with the new code of practice by year end. It is my understanding that the Department is now talking to all the sectoral regulators to ensure they have a level of consistency around the form and content of oversight agreements should they be needed.

On the concept of comply or explain, it is fair to say that the code of practice on the governance of State bodies assumes there is a board and a chief executive and that it is almost a commercial semi-State organisation in some ways. We are obviously not like that and there are some areas where we are not in compliance, but can easily explain why not. We are largely complaint with the code of practice, but we have yet to conclude our gap analysis. Part of that will be working with the Department to ensure we have the appropriate oversight agreement, in whatever form it may be required.

Our 2016 annual report is currently in preparation and in the next week or two we will be looking at our accounts. The body of the report on what we have undertaken during the year is currently in preparation and it will be the third quarter of this year before we will publish that report. This is being realistic in the context of where we are in the development of that report.

As part of our annual work planning, which we submit to the Department, we seek to establish as set of key performance indicators, KPIs, based on what we hope to achieve in the year, by which we can be judged. One of the key outputs that may be of benefit to the committee is our annual work planning cycle, which itself is based on our strategic plan. We set ourselves a series of goals around work we want to achieve such as advancing the iSEM, the all-island single electricity market, initiating some new piece of policy implementation based on new legislation or a review of existing piece of work. The goals may include elements of business as usual such as running a complaints service for consumers where we try to set realistic KPIs.

Reference was made to Brexit. Ms Brien will cover some of the questions on electricity prices and the single electricity market as raised by Deputy Stanley.