Thanks to one of the Minister, Deputy Ryan's, brainwaves the last time he was in Government, for the past 12 years, without knowing it, ordinary families and households have been subsidising the electricity bills of some of the largest companies in the world. The large energy user, LEU, rebalancing subvention took charges away from big businesses and added them to the bills of domestic users in a scandalous scheme that sums up the Minister's approach to these issues, which is to protect large corporations and penalise ordinary workers and families. Freedom of information documents secured by Senator Lynn Boylan show that even the amount approved was actually surpassed and more was actually passed on to LEU customers. Will the Minister now instruct the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, immediately to evaluate how much additional costs were domestic customers burdened with under this scheme? More importantly, will he make sure it is repaid to hard-pressed families?

The instruction we gave to CRU last April was to reverse that approach, and that has been done. In 2010, if I recall rightly, our economy was at real risk. The price of electricity for industrial providers was historically much higher than other European competing countries. There was a real risk of major job losses at a time when our economy was in real difficulty and in danger. It is this Government, in different circumstances, which has changed that and reversed that decision.

Will customers be repaid?

I believe it was appropriate at the time when our economy was at risk to make that change. I believe it is appropriate now for us to have directed CRU to reverse it.