Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputy for the amendment. There has been significant diversity in the approach to the implementation of the market cap across the European Union. While some countries such as France and Spain have chosen slightly lower caps than us for renewable energy, others, such as Denmark, Belgium, Sweden and Austria, have chosen caps at higher levels. Several member states have also, like us, chosen different caps for different generation technologies. In appraising the policy options via a structured multi-criteria analysis, the caps that were chosen in this Bill were deemed appropriate to capture the windfall gains while maintaining positive investment signals.

With specific regard to the proposed amendment, the European Commission has already begun a process of review of the market cap measures in other European jurisdictions, and that report will be freely available online. In other words, it makes sense that the implementation of this regulation across different European countries is studied and compared, but I think it also makes sense that it is done by somebody who is independent of those member states. The fact that the European Commission is reviewing how the market cap has been applied in these different countries makes sense. It is also worth remembering that within the application of this regulation, a degree of freedom is given to countries to implement it in the way that they wish to, and because different countries have chosen different caps for different generation technologies, there will not be an exact comparison between one country and another. I look forward to seeing the analysis by the European Commission when that is online. For those reasons, I do not propose to accept the amendment.