Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

On the first point, I welcome the Deputy’s input on the disconnections area. The one part of this that we always bear in mind is that when there is a moratorium on disconnections, suppliers do not engage with their customers, their customers are not getting those reminder letters and they are not getting that level of contact. What we found at the end of the last moratorium, which ended in May, was that although there were probably not a lot more customers in debt, the ones who were in debt had greater debt, so it had built up the problem more. It is always that balance that we are trying to manage. We will listen to the views of the Deputy, the customer stakeholder group and the suppliers, and keep the situation under active review over the course of the winter.

I want to respond on the EirGrid generation capacity statement. It is important to underscore that what it said is "if no action is taken", we would have problems over the next five winters. It is very clear that this is not a situation in which no action can be taken. It is a call to action and we are responding to that with the publication of our information paper, with the proposals and with managing through that process of delivering the interim measures, as well as the enduring measures, which were always going to require additional gas-fired generation capacity to be delivered by 2030. We are just having to front-load that now because of the outcome of the auctions.

As Mr. Gannon outlined earlier, we were disappointed with the outcome of the auctions, the non-delivery of the 500 MW and then the lack of participation by industry in the subsequent auction. However, it has given us that opportunity to engage, to understand and to address some of the real challenges that generators faced in coming forward with new projects and delivering new projects. Perhaps Mr. Gannon would like to add to that.