Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

It is simply the case that suppliers offer discounts for direct debits and they are entitled to do so where there is a genuine cost saving for them. How do we support those households?

There is not a barrier. The switching of a customer is not prohibited but there is a debt flag. That is something that we introduced after much discussion with the agencies and customer stakeholder group. It was not helping customers to debt-hop. They ended up leaving a trail of debt behind them that was still being pursued so that was a challenge for those customers. This is really about how we really help the customers in debt to pay down the debt. There are obligations on suppliers around how they manage that with customers. It is a challenging situation and will probably be more challenging with more households than ever this year. This can be by debt repayment plans which work with customers for longer periods and by supporting them, if it is the right option, with prepayment meters, and so on. We are looking at all of those options to try to support those customers.