Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

In relation to the requested reports on demand-side reduction and energy use, I am happy to provide the Senators with any information I legally can that is relevant and useful. If any Senator contacts me I will be happy to work on that. We do not feel that it fits in with an EPA piece of legislation.

On prioritisation of electricity supply, the State has a range of mitigations before cuts to household power apply. These include businesses, those who work voluntarily or have demand mandatorily curtailed, demand-side units that work with us formally to reduce demand as needed and mandatory curtailments that occur with large users, which provide us with an extra line of defence in the event of shortage of power. This entire legislation is about making sure there is capacity so that, in an emergency, we do not have to ever turn off the general public's power. That is the whole purpose of the legislation. The priority is to make sure people continue to receive electricity for the purposes they need it, whether that is by turning off large energy users or using emergency back-up generators