Ms Marie Donnelly:

I have many thoughts about it but I was warned at the beginning to be careful about what I say. There are possibilities. This is not just an Irish issue. It is a general issue around the world. When a system has operated for years and years with large incumbents, there tends to be a degree of inertia. Large incumbents move slowly for the most part. If I may use a German example, rather than an Irish one, RWE and Aon are two of the four huge utility companies in Germany, with a market capitalisation of billions of euros. In 2009, the chairman of RWE said he did not believe in renewables, that it was a fad and it would disappear. Within three years, RWE's market capitalisation had halved because the utilities did not invest in renewables whereas the farmers and the citizens did, and suddenly the two big utility companies found themselves on the wrong side of the new technology. That error has been corrected because they are both investing heavily in renewable technologies today, including onshore wind and offshore wind. That is an illustration of large utility companies that have been around for a long time and that say they know how to do this and will not have their system disrupted. It is not unique to Germany. Sometimes large entities that have been around for a long time need to be forced to move and to move more quickly.