Mr. Nicholas Tarrant:

I thank the committee for the invitation to today’s meeting. I am the managing director of ESB Networks. I am joined by Alan Rossiter, who is responsible for three of our six regions across Ireland and is heavily involved in delivery of housing connections as part of our wider programme of work. We welcome the opportunity to speak with members on electricity infrastructure, the key role that ESB Networks plays in the connection of housing and enabling the delivery of the Government’s Housing for All targets. I will briefly introduce ESB Networks and cover some summary points on our housing connections.

ESB Networks is part of ESB Group, a commercial semi-State company that is overseen by an independent regulator, namely, the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities, CRU, since 1999. We meet the needs of all 2.4 million Irish electricity customers. We do not generate or sell electricity. Our role is to design, build, own, operate and maintain the electricity distribution network and, as transmission asset owner, to design, build and maintain the onshore electricity transmission network. There is approximately 180,000 km of electricity network across Ireland.

Our capital expenditure in 2022 was €869 million across all our work programmes, including network connections. This is part of an overall €4.4 billion investment programme under our Price Review 5 regulatory contract set by the CRU in 2020 for the period 2021-25.

We have approximately 3,600 employees. This number is increasing because we have a growing programme of work to meet the needs of the country and all electricity customers. We recruited 209 people in 2022, 223 so far in 2023 and we have doubled our network technician apprenticeship intake to 96 per year. The delivery capability of our line and electrical contract partners is also growing in parallel and has grown 85% in the past 12 months.

We are committed to continuing to grow our delivery capability to enable any further increases in housing connections over the years ahead. Our previous record year for new domestic and business connections in total was 105,000 in 2006.

We also have a central role in the delivery the Climate Action Plan 2023 by connecting renewable generation, enabling the electrification of heat and transport and in other areas, such as electricity demand flexibility, enabling the home retrofit programme and installing smart meters across Ireland. We launched our networks for net zero strategy in January 2023, which aligns fully with the Climate Action Plan 2023 targets and sets out for future plans to help deliver net zero for Ireland.

In 2022, we completed more than 33,800 domestic connections in addition to more than 5,000 business connections. Further details are provided later in this submission. This was an increase of 36% compared with 2021. In the first five months of 2023, we completed more than 12,700 new domestic connections to the electricity network.

As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the global supply chain shortages presented a significant challenge to ESB Networks in 2022-23. ESB Networks worked closely with our supply chain partners to increase supplies and seek alternative sources to enable a strong housing connection delivery outturn for 2022. This continues to be a risk in 2023, based on both the war in Ukraine and the growth in electricity infrastructure investment worldwide.

The nature of housing connections has changed as more electrical capacity is required for new housing to cater for the increased demand from heat pumps and electrical vehicle charging. We increased our specification by 120% in 2019 to future-proof housing connections and, at the end of 2022, approximately 50,000 homes were connected based on this revised standard.

We engage with stakeholders and customers nationally to collaborate with them to deliver this programme of work. Further details on our stakeholder engagement can be found later in our submission. The provision of infrastructure and electricity network connections for housing has always been a key area for our business and will continue to be for the future.

Wider societal support for building of new electricity infrastructure will be critical for enabling the delivery of the targets in Climate Action Plan 2023 and the provision of electricity connections for housing.

This is the end of our introduction. I will hand back to the Cathaoirleach. I am happy to take any questions from the committee.