Mr. Fintan Slye:

Deputy Ó Caoláin asked whether the cost would be passed on to consumers. He asked why those costs would be passed on to consumers and the impact over the lifetime of the project. In the context of transmission development, at the end of the day consumers end up paying for the cost of the transmission network. It is broken down and differentiated depending on the consumer group, with industrial consumers tending to have a greater percentage of their bill relating to transmission charges than domestic customers.

In terms of the impact on people's bills, I am aware of one piece of analysis that was done. The energy regulator reported to this committee that if the transmission infrastructure development bill was to increase by €2 billion through the undergrounding of a series of the major projects, it would raise prices by 3% to 5% at domestic level. This is on the record of this committee and I may not have it 100% right. The one point I want to stress is that industrial customers pay significantly more as a percentage of their bills in transmission charges. For some of those industrial customers, who are among the largest employers in the country, the additional energy bill in a year could exceed €1 million. Therefore, 3% to 5% in some contexts might not seem like a large amount of money, but we need to consider the effect on all users of the system and how that affects Ireland's competitiveness.