Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

I will come in on the question about smart meters and smart services if that is all right. Like Deputy Bruton, we think this is an exciting area. As of the end of May, 320,000 smart meters have been rolled out to homes in Ireland. ESB Networks is continuing to deploy in various locations across Ireland and is ramping up to 40,000 installations per month so the installation process is gathering pace and scale. Smart services go-live occurred on 26 February. It was the point at which systems were available for suppliers to start getting information from the smart meters and offering services to customers. That is quite recent but we have seen suppliers going out offering new types of tariffs to customers. Again, by the end of May, approximately 7,000 customers had switched to tariffs. Interestingly the vast majority of them switched to more innovative tariff offerings, rather than the standard time of use, which we had sort of designed as the regulatory backstop. There seems to be an appetite to different types of product and services and that will only grow.

We have done a bit of research with the ESRI on how to tell the story of these tariffs and the value customers may derive from them with Dr. Pete Lunn and his team. On foot of that, we are requiring suppliers to send out what we are calling a time of use primer to all customers. That will start landing in customers' homes this month. This is to socialise the concept of time of use more widely and to help customers understand it can lower their costs and make a real difference in decarbonisation. We are also looking to bring on board some communications support, and I think we have already done so. It is to help us in the CRU tell that story more effectively to customers, as the neutral regulator that is on their side, rather than maybe a supplier that is selling a particular product, and to outline what we think the opportunities are for customers. There are also areas where customers might want to be careful. If they are vulnerable customers critically dependent on assistive technology that is electrically powered then some of these options may not be suitable for them and we want somebody telling that story of protection as well.

As we see the clean energy package transposed, we will have those new functions around regulatory frameworks for active customers for third-party aggregators that will start to leverage that. Thus for an individual customer selling, say, demand-side services, if a household does not have much clout but if we have an aggregator bringing together the value of thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers, or indeed a community coming together to sell that into its local area, then there is a power and value to that. That is the direction of travel we see and we have embarked on that now with the smart metering and smart services go-live but I agree it is the tip of the iceberg. We see significant growth potential in that area and think it is important for the hearts and minds of customers, who want to participate and may not necessarily be sure what their options are.