Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

Yes, but the new houses will be best in class. As soon as ESB Networks has procured smart meters, all new houses will have them. In terms of mass buying on behalf of customers, it will almost be like the Big Switch campaign because customers might group together to negotiate a deal that is open to the local council. From our point of view, customers will always have a right to switch and we need to ensure it is available that if someone moved into a house and found a supplier he or she did not like, he or she could switch to a different supplier, and that it would comply with the supplier handbook on customer protections. That would be open to local councils to explore if they wanted to bring those customers together.