Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 2 April 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment

Energy Plant Certification: Commission for the Regulation of Utilities

Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

The process is about taking data provided by the applicants, including financial data such as the price of inputs, the cost of capital and the cost at which they can sell the product and applying a formula to that data. The formula, which is legislation, has not changed. The process by which we translate their data into that formula has not changed. What has changed is the data that were input to that formula. The data that came through in the application in 2018 differed from the data that came through in 2012. I appreciate that if one stands back from it, Mayo Renewable Limited would say that the plant has not changed and it is quite right. It is still drying biomass. Looking at it from the outside, some of the key features have not changed. However, our process is around taking the applicants' data and applying the process to it and that data have changed. Our process is the same and the formula is fundamentally the same. I cannot be clearer-----