Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister, Deputy Smyth, for his response. From the negotiations and conversations the Government has had with the CRU, is the CRU confident in the briefings it has given Government that the power outages will not happen during the winter months? Is the Government absolutely sure? The Minister, Deputy Ryan, has spoken a number of times on this and has been very cautious in what he said and very hopeful that there will not be power outages but have we confidence that there will not be power outages? It is hugely worrying for families and for homes, but particularly for businesses. There are many businesses which might not have back-up systems available. Does the Government have a back-up in place? If power outages happen, as is possible, what happens on the back of that?

With regard to costs for people, is there a way that we could look at the public service obligation, PSO, levy that is on the bill everyone gets every two months?Some of that money goes into smart metering. Is there any way we could look at pausing that, potentially for the next number of months, because of the extreme rise in prices?