Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

The Deputy's questions touched on a number of areas. I will reply on the question about smart metering and will then hand over to my colleagues. The Deputy is exactly right. The data the smart meters produce are there to enable customers to have better insight into how they are using their energy so they can use less and save money. Those data also enable customers to use energy at cheaper times, for example, at night-time rather than at peak time to save them money. That is fundamental to the collective bargaining agreement that drove the programme.

At the same time, customer choice has to be at the heart of that. When we started with the programme, we wanted all customers to have instantaneous access to the data from the meters, but as general data protection regulation, GDPR, legislation developed, evolved and was implemented, it was clear the customer would have to make the choice whether to release the data to their suppliers so that a supplier could provide that customer's energy in a useful and meaningful fashion rather than something that would happen automatically. That is the basis of the programme now. It is the customer's choice as to whether those data become available.

It would ultimately be an ambition of the CRU to move most customers towards time-of-use products because, frankly, that is the best way to incentivise behaviour that can be beneficial to customers and support the grid by reducing peak usage and enabling greater use of renewables when we have high levels of renewables on the system. That is also driven by customer choice because some customers may feel they simply do not have the ability to make those changes. It is based on customer choice. In the coming period, we will be providing more information to customers to support their choices on this. We will be advertising and promoting why smart metering, data and time-of-use tariffs might be of benefit to customers so they feel more confident in making some of those choices.

I will turn to my colleagues on the Deputy's other questions.