Ms Aoife MacEvilly:

The commission has been in place for the longest period of this matter.

As Mr. Gannon said, this was a Government decision conveyed to the CRU. It was taken in the context at the time of a package of emergency measures in which the CRU, industry and Departments worked collaboratively at a time of financial crisis to support customers. Some measures were targeted at large energy users. As the Deputy will be aware, many measures were also targeted at domestic customers. The CRU worked collaboratively with the Government, agencies and industry to implement those measures at a time of crisis.

As regards the Government's decision, when that was conveyed to us we understood it to be evergreen effectively. As the Deputy will be aware, having looked at the responses we got to the consultation in 2022 when we decided to reverse this measure, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment was very clear that there was an expectation that this measure would continue. The sense from industry groups was also that it would continue, in effect. I do not think there was a sense that we were scrutinising the policy every year in that same sense. However, we made a network characterisation annually and continued to implement the measure. We made that decision every year and published and conveyed that in our papers to be really transparent. That is what occurred.

The five-year price controls are a little different in that they look at how much funding we should provide to the network companies to deliver their agenda, rather than how we should distribute it among customers. When you read the price control papers, you will see it is all about how much we are investing, and how much CapEx and OpEx we are investing as a whole, rather than how it will be distributed among customers. It is the annual process that looks at how we distribute this among customers based on a method or formula, as the ESB Networks highlighted, agreed between the CRU and network companies. We have learned a lot from that.

Perhaps there were opportunities for us to look at this before we did. I think we signalled that we would look at it. I think what happened was that, in the context of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, we had another opportunity, working with the Government in collaboration and again in a time of crisis, to look at what we can do in very different circumstances and with very different policy priorities. That gave us more of a basis to end this, if you like. I hope I have summarised our position.