Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail)
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The committee could write to the Department, based on what we have heard from the CRU, and ask it to come forward with a response to the legislative challenge in this regard. That would be helpful.

My next point relates to the general cost of electricity being based on the wholesale market. The CRU rightly put forward the principle of hedging, which has protected us from extremes on one end and is now being balanced out on the other end. I am conscious that when gas and electricity prices - particularly gas prices - skyrocketed, there was a connection between the prices of gas and electricity. The market quickly started to move prices up, long before the hedging position reached an end point. There was advance sight of where the market was going. Has any work been done on the way in which electricity companies benefited in the short term before they reached the end of their hedging position? Of course it is a competitive issue. The electricity companies are clearly not tapering prices down now in recognition of where international gas prices are at.

The next question is around competition.