Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

It will also depend on the ultimate design, the details of which are still being ironed out.

We have not considered a ban on low usage charges. Ireland has a high level of low usage, which we understand relates mainly to holiday homes. It is important to note that where people have holiday homes, even where they may not be using a lot of electricity, we support those homes through the provision of electricity networks that are there to ensure there is sufficient power whenever they use those homes. It is right that people pay a fair share towards the cost of networks. From the suppliers' point of view, the low usage charge in some cases relates to the fact they have costs in serving those customers, even when such customers are not necessarily using the charge. We have not looked at that as a specific area of concern at this point.

On the cheapest available tariff being available as standard, we looked at what the best options are. As the Deputy knows, the way competition tends to work for domestic customers is that suppliers have a standard charge and they then offer discounts to attract new customers. They will often offer those same discounts to existing customers who sign up for an additional year or who avail of things such as paying by direct debit or getting paperless bills. We think that is a useful part of competition in the electricity sector. If suppliers are asked to provide those discounts to all customers regardless of whether they have lower costs, such as direct debit or paperless billing, then ultimately everyone is paying the same charge, there is very little competition and everyone is paying a slightly higher charge.

It is really about who we want to protect the most. The people we focused on, through our current consumer protection measures, are vulnerable customers and customers on financial hardship prepayment meters because we believe they are the ones where we need to target the most support. We are also asking suppliers to make it clearer to their existing loyal customers that discounts are available for them, especially if they are willing to commit for an extra year or a period of the suppliers' choice.

We have looked at self-disconnection and tried to get some figures on it. Ms Trant will pick that up.