Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

I thank the Chairman. We understood - or misunderstood - the committee was seeking brief opening remarks rather than a detailed opening statement. My apologies if we did not provide what was being sought. This very brief overview of the role of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, highlights some of the important work our team undertakes in support of protecting the public interest in energy, water and energy safety. Our activities include the economic regulation of energy and water, protecting energy and water customers, and energy safety regulation. I will not go through the list outlined in our written submission as the committee will be familiar with it.

The committee has an interest in our new strategic plan. In line with our statutory requirements, we submitted the draft plan to the Ministers of our parent Department at the end of last year. Our draft strategy is under review by the Minister. Once its consideration is complete, he will lay it before the Houses of the Oireachtas. We will publish it and, of course, are always available to the committee to discuss it in detail at any stage.

For this meeting, I will highlight the four strategic priorities that we have set forward in our draft strategic plan for the current three-year period. These priorities range across our functions in energy, water and energy safety regulation. They include ensuring security of supply, obviously, in the electricity sector but also in respect of gas security, as well as ensuring secure supplies of water and wastewater services.

Our second strategic priority is driving a low-carbon future. This relates to how we regulate energy markets and energy networks to support the decarbonisation process. It also will encompass how we use the water network to ensure a low-carbon future and, indeed, brings in our safety teams to ensure that in the decarbonisation of the gas network, for example, we introduce new decarbonised gases in a safe as well as an efficient manner.

The third priority relates to protecting and empowering customers, an area in which the committee is keenly interested. This ranges from protecting vulnerable customers up to supporting what might be incredibly sophisticated customers in making choices to decarbonise their own energy consumption and save money in so doing. In addition, it is about ensuring new options are available to customers to participate in, and be at the heart of, the energy transition.

Our final priority is to ensure our organisation gears up to address the significant challenges ahead of us. In that regard, we will enable our people and organisational capacity. Those are the four strategic priorities from our new strategic plan.

The final slide of the presentation we submitted to the committee simply notes the range of topics in which the committee has expressed an interest. It highlights some of the materials we have submitted in support of those topics and to which we may refer in the course of questions and answers. Obviously, we are available to provide any other information or detail the committee may wish to have.