Mr. John Tuohy:

Yes, we were consulted by the Department on a regular basis. The Freight Transport Association Ireland has been very vocal in its opposition to this and on its website it mentions being consulted by the former Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, in 2012. It has been involved in the consultation process also. I believe its issue is that while we were all involved in the information gathering side of the process. The Department took everybody's views on board - it certainly took ours on board - and then produced this system based on those views. An Post had different requirements to what we had, the emergency services had different requirements and Irish speaking people and people of Gaeltacht areas had their concerns about retaining their names and so on. I believe the Department did a good job of taking all views on board and of coming up with a system that satisfies most of everyone's requirements.