Mr. Nigel Hillis:

EirGrid said that. This substation in Kingscourt was the lynchpin of the application, yet after the oral hearing collapsed, less than one year later, in May 2011, when the company issued its preliminary re-evaluation report, it said the substation would not be needed for at least ten years. In 2015, it is still the company's position that the substation will not be needed for ten years. Will it ever be needed?

How can anyone trust EirGrid when it says that the project is urgent because there is a security of supply issue in Northern Ireland? The issue has been rectified. It arose because two of the plants in Northern Ireland at Kilkeel and Ballylumford are old and, in 2012, under EU directives, parts of these plants were to be decommissioned. A four-year derogation was granted until 2016 but the dirty plant must be decommissioned that year. Essentially, the North will lose approximately 500 MW of generation capacity. That would create a risk to security of supply in Northern Ireland but, in the meantime, the regulator there has put in place 250 MW of new generation capacity in one of those plants. That has been ordered. The Moyle interconnector will be repaired by 2016. It is only operating on one line at the moment, but when it is back in action, it will provide a further 250 MW. That takes care of the 500 MW and, therefore, there is no security of supply issue in Northern Ireland.

EirGrid has said that the interconnector is needed for the operation of the single electricity market. We do not see the €30 million that can be saved as any saving at all.

They are contradictory arguments because if a security of supply situation arises in Northern Ireland from 2020 or 2021 onwards, then the single electricity market, SEM, cannot operate effectively because it will be a one-way street. The electricity will go from South to North and therefore, as Mr. Slye admitted last week, Northern Ireland will be obliged to build new plants from 2021 onwards to operate the single electricity market effectively. Therefore, there is not an issue or situation regarding the security of supply in Northern Ireland now and nor will there be in the future if it is desired to operate the single electricity market in an efficient way.

It has been put forward that the €30 million is a saving to consumers or customers; but it is not. It is a saving within the single electricity market. It is a wholesale saving and there is absolutely no guarantee that a single cent of that €30 million will be passed back to the consumers. At the meeting last week, Mr. Slye stated that the east-west interconnector had reduced wholesale prices by 9% but a much more interesting figure would be by how much has the east-west interconnector reduced my electricity bill or those of members. I do not believe it has reduced them by a single cent.

The issue was raised about technology and how it is advancing all the time. It is advancing all the time. In 2008, permission was given in France to place underground the France-Spain interconnector. While it is not quite as long as the North-South interconnector, it must go through the Pyrenees. The project was given permission to go underground in 2008. It is now 2015 and that project has been inaugurated and delivered within a timescale of five to six years.