Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

I appreciate that constructive question. We look at ourselves closely and you have to learn from when things are not going well. You have to make sure you understand where the challenges arose so that you can fix the problems. I will ask Mr. Melvin to talk about the EY report shortly, but one of the things we did was to recognise that we needed not just to expand in numbers to accept new roles and responsibilities but also to increase our internal capacity of challenge and analysis. When we asked for additional staff, it included many new areas like offshore energy generation and the strategic impact of same in anticipation of new functions coming in. We also looked to enhance the numbers and capability we have internally to ensure, from a strategic perspective, we are better fit to look at the enormous challenges that lie ahead of us.

We have a sector that is in incredible transition, with decarbonisation, security of supply and cost challenges all coming to a head. We asked for and were fortunate to receive support for 73 additional staff. Some of those are for the new areas I mentioned but some of them are to enhance our capabilities internally. One of the areas where we want to enhance internal capability includes security of supply. We had potentially become dependent on third parties giving us information and we probably need more of an ability to assess critically and come to views on that information ourselves. That is the area and that would have then been highlighted in the EY report about how to apply critical assessment to some of those challenging issues ahead of us.