Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

We can point to a few areas we are actively investigating, however. One of the areas comes under the REPowerEU statement from the European Commission. If there were opportunities to accelerate the processes around, for example, offshore wind or the deployment of infrastructure to cut down the timeframes for delivery, we would be completely supportive and would work towards them. While this is a non-exhaustive list because, as Mr. Gannon has said, we have not listed these measures, the demand side is very important to us. If we can do more on the demand side and do it quickly, that could have a very significant impact. This is a real opportunity to do so because offering opportunities to customers to shift demand towards lower-cost and greener times will help them to mitigate the impact of the cost increases that are coming down the track for those customers while also helping us to accelerate not just the deployment of renewable generation capacity, but the use of the capacity currently in place at times when we might otherwise be curtailing it. For example, if there are high wind speeds at off-peak times, we might be paying renewable energy generators to turn their output down when we should actually be paying customers to turn their immersion heaters on or run their dishwashers at those times. Those are the kinds of opportunities that present themselves.

As Mr. Gannon mentioned earlier, we are facing very significant costs arising from a lack of delivery of critical grid infrastructure. We need to prioritise some of the key projects that will unlock the value for Irish customers of delivering more from the existing renewables infrastructure we have to hand while also reducing the cost of constraining and curtailing renewable generation. These are not easy projects to deliver. I am referring to things such as the North-South interconnector and digging up a lot of Dublin to deliver enhanced infrastructure that would allow us to bring on offshore wind. We cannot provide for new demand or deliver new generation capacity in Dublin right now because the grid is so locked up. We need to fix that or costs will be increased, opportunities will be reduced and the deployment of infrastructure will be delayed. That is a non-exhaustive list but those are some of the areas we would prioritise.