Mr. Nicholas Tarrant:

There is a plan to deliver these substations over the PR6 period. They are likely to be delivered more towards the second half of PR6 than the first because they take time to deliver in terms of bringing them through the planning process, undertaking procurement and the subsequent construction period.

On the wider piece of capacity constraints on the network, there are places on the network where there is limited capacity today. We are working on those. These are areas where we have seen probably the biggest population growth. If we look back over the past ten years, Portlaoise is an example of this, with population growth of more than 16% between the censuses in 2011 and 2022 and continuing at pace. There are other towns like that but taking the big urban centres, particularly north Dublin and Dublin West, there are particular issues we are working on in conjunction with EirGrid. There are also other areas across the network.

We publish a capacity heat map on an ongoing basis. This outlines where there is limited capacity and gives customers a sense of where those areas are. We encourage anybody looking to connect to the network, particularly housing developers, to come and talk to us early so we can work with them on their needs. That is continuing.