Mr. John Melvin:

I will do my best to answer that. This winter, there was peak demand twice in December and Ms MacEvilly outlined that situation. As it happened at the time, there was low to no wind. The situation in France is important to us this year. One of the operational steps EirGrid has taken for this winter is that there is significant co-operation between EirGrid, the TSO here, National Grid, the TSO in Great Britain, and RTE, the TSO in France. We have helped Great Britain at times when it has been in difficulties and vice versa. The situation in France has improved. Nevertheless, the beast from the east in 2018 hit at the end of February, so there is still more of this winter to go.

For winter 2023-24, the first tranche of the temporary emergency generation EirGrid is procuring, of approximately 250 MW, is expected before that winter starts and that all relates to the Dublin region. EirGrid is procuring a second tranche, relating to the EirGrid, Electricity and Turf (Amendment) Act 2022, namely, the 258 MW in Shannonbridge and 150 MW in Tarbert. The expectation is that the majority of that will be delivered in quarter 4 of this year, which will mean we will be in winter 2023-24 when parts of that come. In July of this year, we will hold what is called a T-1 capacity auction, which will be for equipment that can come in in time for 1 October 2023. A number of plants, comprising both gas turbine fire plants and battery facilities, will have the opportunity to compete in that, gain capacity revenues and, therefore, be available to the system for 1 October 2023. Those plants are in construction and a decision will be made as to whether they compete in this auction in July for delivery this winter from 1 October 2023.

We are going to have an auction in March but I will skip past that for a moment and point out we recently had a number of interactions with people who won in the auctions we held in early 2022. There was a request that if there were a delay to their delivery caused by a judicial review of a planning decision, we would allow the start of the contract to be delayed by the same period from opening of the case to judgment, whereby we would add that to the start of the contract and to the duration of the contract. That decision was made by the SEM committee in early January and published. A second factor is that entities that competed in the auctions early in 2022 have expressed concerns, as has industry, about inflation since then, and we have all seen inflation since then. In October of last year, the SEM committee had a call for evidence on that to examine the degree of unexpected inflation and the evidence that entities could give us as to how this has affected them. In the next few weeks, the SEM committee will publish a follow-up consultation on that to seek further details from industry, with a view to progressing that matter significantly. It is clear there has been significant unexpected inflation since last year. That further consultation will be published shortly. We have listened to industry and will engage with it in that regard.

Beyond that, in March of this year there will be the T-4 auction for 2027-28, and we, industry and EirGrid have been examining important factors in that auction. We are making a series of changes to the capacity auction following on from the EY report, which in turn followed on from our understanding of what has happened in the capacity market in the past. Some of the things we are looking at in that auction include the de-ratings we apply to plants to ensure we value and pay them properly, that is, not overpaying them but not undervaluing them, and other elements such as the payments that must be paid once an auction has been won, the pre-qualification that has to be met to get into an auction and, importantly, the appropriate sums that can be bid to allow participation in the auction. The SEM committee expects to publish information on that final piece of that work in the next few days.