Mr. Fintan Slye:

There was a common thread between Deputies Dooley and Stanley around the Celtic interconnector. It will only be built if it makes sense for Irish consumers. It also needs to make sense from a European and a French consumer perspective. In terms of money invested in it on the Irish side, it needs to clearly demonstrate that that is of value and delivers value for Irish consumers. There is a lot of talk about the need to bring prices down here. One of the effects of a Celtic interconnector would be that we would have access to continental European power prices, which are lower than Irish electricity prices. The goal of the interconnector is not to drive policy in terms of exporting renewables, it is to make sure that we make the best use of the resources that we have and to allow us to import power from Europe more cheaply.

In terms of the allocation of costs, for projects like this there is a regulatory process in Europe called cross-border cost allocation, CBCA. The CER, with its counterparts in France, looks at where the benefits for the project fall, be that in France or elsewhere in Europe. If the benefits predominantly accrue to one country, should the costs predominantly fall on that country? We believe that the project should receive European funding. To date, it has received funding for the previous phase and the current phase. These phases are relatively small money in comparison to the overall capital costs of future phases. We will make sure that whatever grants or funding is available in a European context will be availed of. The Connecting Europe facility has funded 50% of the cost of the project to date, with the remainder split on a 50:50 basis between ourselves and the French electricity transmission network, Réseau de Transport d'Électricité, RTE. The overriding message is that it will only be delivered if it delivers benefits for Irish consumers. That is an absolute.