Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

I thank the Deputy. What we are seeing in electricity costs at the moment is unprecedented. The last time we saw increases of this scale was in 2008 and it is probably worse at the moment. What we are seeing across the EU are a number of factors which are leading to increasing prices of this scale for customers across the Union. It is a shared challenge and a deep concern for regulators and policymakers. I will outline the relevant factors. Gas is more expensive at the moment. That has an impact on gas bills but because we use gas-fired generation, it feeds through to electricity prices. It is not so much that the gas generators are expensive to run per se. They are efficient usually. It is that they have to buy gas on the international market as well and the price of that gas feeds through. In addition, carbon prices have increased and that feeds through to the price of electricity. We have seen a very low wind period over the summer, which means we did not have the nice mitigating impact of wind generation which can lower day-ahead market prices. There has, therefore, been a series of circumstances which is leading to this general increase in electricity and gas prices for consumers. We mentioned earlier some of the protections we are putting in place to try to help customers through a difficult period.