Mr. James Nix:

I fully accept that the average figure will not reflect households where there are financial pressures. Many of the households to which the Deputy referred will have no expenditure on alcoholic beverages and cigarettes but there are households, and the average figures bear this out, where spending on alcoholic beverages and cigarettes is very high. It comes back to education. To give a simple answer to the Deputy's question, over time - this is inevitable with the rising price of energy - we will spend, on average, a greater percentage of household income on food. If food production is completely interwoven with energy cost, it is impossible to avoid a situation where more of our money goes on food.

The Deputy asked about national roadmaps and about from where the pressure coming in terms of resistance. Most of the resistance comes from larger agri-related enterprises.

I mentioned baby food. We all know Ireland is now producing somewhere in the region of 10% of the world's infant formula.

For better or worse, Ireland is a venue in which a good deal of dairy production is sourced for the global marketplace, and that suits the corporate players in that sector. I read The Irish Farmers' Journal. It is a staple in our household. It has many advertisements from pesticide and chemical companies and large international corporate interests. That has been the case for some time and I do not anticipate that will change.

On the question of walkable neighbourhoods, we cannot be more ad idem. I will look into that individual case. We have run into problems in some historic towns. Fethard, in Tipperary, is another example of where we dearly want to have expansion very close to the town but there is a tension in terms of protecting the historic structure. It happened in Trim also, and it is a difficult situation. I will check the individual case and revert to the Deputy on it separately.