Mr. Alan Rossiter:

Further to what Mr. Tarrant said, we have a code of practice there as well. We have agreed clearance corridors that must be maintained around lines depending on the voltage level, whether it is a low voltage, medium voltage or transmission line. In many cases, those clearance corridors are being impeded upon and we have to engage with the owners of the forestry to try to clear it back to those corridors. Sometimes it can be quite tricky to get to the ownership of the forestry but in certain areas, and particularly after the storm in January where forestry caused us issues around the time to get the line restored because of the nature of the trees that impacted our network, we are going in afterwards and trying to clear those corridors. The more we can do around trying to maintain those corridors across all forestry, the better.

Across the general vegetation across the country outside of forestry, we have cyclical timber-cutting standards that we maintain and try to keep to. What we have noticed is that over the past few years we have had to increase the standards, increase our cutting distance, etc. As we move forward, over the next couple of years we will hopefully get on top of the forestry and then clear the other vegetation impacting on our network.