Ms Sinead Ryan:

On the costing of the scheme, following the budget day announcement when the parameters were decided, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications carried out a detailed costing exercise for the scheme. That was based on 400,000 businesses being potentially eligible for the scheme. That figure was chosen on the basis of Revenue data where there about 500,000 businesses within the case 1 and case 2 parameters and it was considered reasonable to apply a discount to that because certain businesses would not be encouraging the energy costs, such as, for example, a plumber or anyone working on the premises of other businesses. As set out in the note provided, the original cost was not calculated then by reference to how much each business would pay or by an average unit price because there was not one available - there is not one particular average unit price. There is a very wide variation in terms of the type of business, the energy category they are on, the different prices they pay and of course the consumption they have across the various ranges. A small number of customers can account for a disproportionate amount of consumption. A bottom-up approach was taken by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, where it went back out to customers and suppliers to try to determine what the average unit price paid would have been at September time. That was used as a baseline and applied to the potential pool of 400,000 businesses.

There were an awful lot of factors at play that then led to the cost not reaching the mark that was expected. As the Deputy will have seen from the note the costing was based on a worst-case scenario for energy prices and consumption. While the prices rose somewhat they subsequently fell and that worst-case scenario did not happen. There was a milder winter than anticipated, mitigation measures were taken across Europe with storage capacity, the average unit prices of businesses varied-----