Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 31 January 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Engagement with the Commission for Regulation of Utilities

Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

Over the past two or three years we had flagged that this was a measure we would be looking at in the context of the annual network charges. In 2020 we initiated a review of network charges as a whole, with a view to looking at this specific question. It was flagged by us, perhaps not at this committee but in our public-facing published documentation, that this was going to be reviewed. I am trying to think back to 2020 but I do not think it was at the level of crisis that we have experienced in terms of energy costs over the last year. We did not have a national energy security framework of actions targeted at this. It really is in the context of a crisis that we took immediate action, or at least action that was not on foot of a major review but targeted at taking measures that would impact-----