Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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Let me just deal with this issue of costs. The Minister has made reference to this, so he knows well that energy suppliers hedge and buy in advance. When we met with some of the energy companies they told us they buy eight or nine months in advance. At the start of the invasion of Ukraine, we met with the energy companies and the regulator and they made the same point. They told us that the price increases we were seeing were not caused by the war but by what happened six or seven months previously, during the lead-up to the war, when Russia used energy as a tactic before it started the war. They also made the point that come September or October 2022, we would see a spike in energy increases because the war would have put the price way up and so on.

When the Minister's colleagues in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, France and other countries are costing proposals like this, they look at the wholesale markets. They look at where prices are going in the future. If we decide to cost something now with a view to it lasting three months, we can look back and see where wholesale prices have been in the past. When we costed our proposal, we looked at the prices but we also built in a increase of about one third to cover potential increased costs. It did not materialise but it was there as a buffer. That is what is normally done in terms of measures. For example, the Minister's temporary business energy support scheme, TBESS, has upper limits. Energy prices could theoretically increase to the upper limits. How much would that scheme cost if energy prices were to hit the upper limits for all businesses? Does the Minister know?