Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 1 July 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage

Housing Delivery, Service and Supply: Discussion

2:00 am

Mr. Nicholas Tarrant:

It is a difficult for any family to be involved in a situation where they have purchased a property and are waiting for an electricity connection. What is crucial with any developer of housing, particularly in areas of the network where there are constraints or limitations on capacity because of the level of growth that has happened, is early engagement and to give us time to work through solutions to ensure we have the capacity available if we can find ways of doing that. In a case like this, what appears to have happened is that the housing development was happening in parallel with the connection application going into us and the application was being processed and assessed while the houses were being built. I cannot comment on the houses in turn being sold on to families and customers. We are doing positive work in Portlaoise. I ask Mr. Rossiter to address what we have done in Portlaoise to upgrade capacity there. That is ongoing work.