Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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I know the issue of higher prices has been raised quite often in the meeting today. On a number of occasions, the witnesses specified the rationale behind the reason those prices were increasing. They spoke about the fact that Ireland is an isolated country and how we have a high gas dependency, low interconnection and a dispersed population. That was repeated a couple of times. The one thing they did not mention impacting on prices was demand. Electricity demand is a key driver of electricity prices. We are seeing a much increased demand on electricity and it is primarily being driven by data centres. I wonder whether the witnesses have done any analysis. Can they quantify the additional prices that are responsible, because of the increased demand? Have they done any modelling on it?