Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will ask two very short questions. The other issue is around demand reduction. I have looked at what other European countries have done. In Germany, they have asked for LED billboards to be turned off and their usage reduced to six hours per day. The NGO in Britain, Adfree Cities, said that LED billboards can be the equivalent of from four up to 33 households, depending on the size and colour of the advertisement. Is that something at which CRU could be looking to address our demand reduction? Given that we have pressure on the grid at certain times, should it be part of it that those billboards go off, say, for example, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. just to relieve pressure on the grid? Is that something the CRU would consider?

We have seen two electricity suppliers go out of the market. Electric Ireland generally follows then as the supplier of last demand. It is trying to plan ahead. It has to buy gas; it has a set number of customers and is doing that forward planning. Iberdrola left the market with no gas reserves or anything and that affected 35,000 customers. Electric Ireland had to then pick up the slack and go out into the market to buy gas. Panda Power now has in the region of 60,000, 70,000 or 80,000 customers. If more of these companies are going to go to the wall, what sort of stress testing are we putting in place that will not negatively impact on Electric Ireland providing the best possible value to customers, but also for those customers of last resort?