Mr. Gerard Moran:

On the issue of contaminated fuel in the UK, we have occurrences of this in Ireland also. There would be a handful of cases every year where the fuel is put into the wrong tank. As soon as this is identified, it is recovered and taken back for reprocessing. I said in my opening statement that we repay the duty on it. Such an occurrence is a normal feature of the industry. If diesel is contaminated with marked diesel, it cannot be sold as road diesel from a filling station. It will be recovered, brought back in, marked and recycled out as marked diesel. The duty paid on it will be adjusted as appropriate. If petrol is contaminated by the addition of diesel, the contaminated petrol will be recovered. It will have to be brought back in for refining and it will go back onto the market after it has been refined. Those are the procedures and protocols that the companies involved have in place. The Revenue authorities are familiar with these issues and cater for them here, and in the UK.

In terms of checks at ports, in major distribution centres we have staff control officers permanently assigned to carry out appropriate checks to ensure fuel is being correctly classified, volumes are correct and that we are getting the correct tax on it. We are very satisfied with the controls we have in place.