Mr. Jim Gannon:

Very briefly, the programme has to adapt as risks change and as some of the mitigation measures succeed or as some of them face more significant risk. There has been a delay, notwithstanding the great efforts of EirGrid, ourselves and others to bring the 200 MW on this winter. That has resulted in a couple of other actions being taken that are additional to the programme, including the optimisation of the batteries that we have in Ireland now, the number of which is growing, to provide greater service during times of stress. A second piece is to enhance demand-side response through a number of measures at domestic and industrial scale. Another, as Mr. Foley stated, is working with the large-scale energy users which have significant quantities of backup generation to access that at times of system stress. There are a number of different measures, but they do change over time and must be added to as risks present themselves.

Another challenge, which was mentioned earlier, is on the retention of some of the larger, older units for the year 2023-2024. Increased risk around that resulted in our seeking extra temporary emergency generation for that year, notwithstanding the fact we are still working to retain some of those units. The programme does evolve and change over time and we are happy to provide regular updates to the committee if it so desires.