Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 15 February 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Commission for Regulation of Utilities Strategic Plan: Discussion

Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

I do not necessarily agree that we do not make direct interventions. The supplier handbook is a direct intervention. It sets out a very detailed set of rules for how a supplier interacts with customers with regard to advertising, marketing, signing up a customer and every aspect of the customer journey with billing and so forth. That, in itself, is quite a significant intervention. As Ms Kavanagh explained, we follow that up with audits to ensure suppliers are complying properly with those rules. We will take action and require suppliers to come into compliance with the handbook. Those are all interventions in the market. Where we see new areas, and the most recent addition to the handbook was on smart metering, we set the rules and we will absolutely seek to enforce compliance with them. Those are interventions. When we-----