Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

A briefing note for the Cabinet subcommittee pointed to the fact that this was going to be unpopular with the public as the subventions were being unwound. The analysis of the electricity bills at that time was that LEUs would see little or no difference in their bills, and some would see decreases of up to 20%. That was a Cabinet subcommittee so with that knowledge the Government still introduced the subvention and instructed the CRU to rebalance the network tariffs in favour of LEUs and bypass a process that, I think, can be found in section 10 of the Electricity Regulation Act. So this matter did not come before the Dáil, this committee or the Seanad. The normal process for the Minister with responsibility for electricity at the time would have been to inform the various institutions, and inform the former Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment Trade and Enterprise in the North of Ireland, about bringing in a mechanism.