Dr. Mark Cassidy:

I would not be close enough to be able to comment on that. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities is better placed. We are seeing enormous price increases for households, whether at the petrol pump or for electricity and gas but they are on the back of very large increases in international gas and oil prices. These figures change every day. International oil prices could be up maybe about 30% on where they were two years ago. International gas prices are up by several hundred percentage points, they have increased by multiples. That is actually something of a difference between the current energy crisis and previous ones. Previous energy crises have nearly always been dominated by fluctuations in oil prices. Fluctuations in gas prices is quite new and it shows the reliance that all of us have on gas.

In terms of gas and electricity, the latest increases show annual increases of 22.3% in one and 27.8% in the other. That was in February and does not take into consideration any of the latest increases so there will be still further increases on top of that. I reiterate that this reflects what we have seen. Whether there is less or more than full pass-on, it primarily reflects what we have seen in international markets.

The futures are for both to remain high and then gradually moderate from the second half of the year. That is what the futures are expecting but to remain much higher than would have been expected two to three years ago. However the expectation in future markets is to remain high but to moderate during the second half of the year. In making our own forecasts, we use future prices for oil and gas to reflect those. The one thing I always say about future oil and gas prices is that history and experience show that they are useless at forecasting what actually happens with oil and gas but they are probably better than anything else. The ECB and ourselves have done a great deal of work and have not found any better way of forecasting. We have done all the models we can. They are not accurate but in such a volatile market, it is very hard to predict what will happen.