Mr. Jim Gannon:

There are a couple of fundamental and unique things about the Irish system, which I am happy to go into. One important thing for us is tracking retail prices and trying to ensure competitiveness. That is in the public interest. That is what our five teams on the retail side work on all the time. In terms of the rate we benchmark ourselves against in Europe, we work off Eurostat. Eurostat is the European Commission's data and statistics warehouse. It uses the purchasing power standard. This considers the relative cost of living in jurisdictions and inflation rates. Using that, in the second half of 2024, because it aggregates and then deliberates on the figures, Irish electricity prices for the typical domestic consumer were about the ninth or tenth highest in Europe. Separately for gas consumers, they were about ninth highest in Europe. This compares the living standard and cost of living in each of the different countries. Notwithstanding that, we are keenly aware of the pressures some consumers are under.

In terms of the underpinning fundamentals, we are geographically remote from the rest of Europe. It costs more for us to get a molecule of gas onto the system. We are relatively poorly interconnected from an electricity perspective, although that is improving. There are other things we are putting in place, such as smart meters, where we will pass the 2 million mark soon, and incentives we are placing on industry to modify their demand on prices. All of that will result in more efficient grid usage, more efficient generation usage, and downward pressure on what would otherwise be there.

On our island we have one of the most dispersed populations in Europe. Per capita, in terms of wires we have four times the distribution network than the European average. That is our settlement pattern. In terms of operating, maintaining, refurbishing, and upgrading to make sure we can get through the next Storm Éowyn or people can put in electric vehicle charging points, it costs more than in other jurisdictions. Separately, when we want to build wind farms or large solar farms, or want to build storage on the system, or flexible thermal generation to back us up when those wind farms are not turning and when it is dark in the middle of winter, it costs more because we are remote. There are certain fundamental things Ireland cannot escape. However, that does not mean for everything within our control and within our ability to apply competitive pressure to, we should not do everything possible to do that.