Mr. Alan Nolan:

If I might just answer on the general principles, this is one issue in moving to real driving emissions. Moreover, we in the motor industry in Ireland take on board all the things said about credibility as from our point of view, it is hugely important across the entire industry. When one looks at the current laboratory-based testing regime, it has been in place since the late 1980s and so is 35 years old. Cars were very different then and what is fitted to cars now is very different. The problem is it was set as a consistency test to make sure each manufacturer would do precisely the same thing. Consequently, while the comparison was good, it did not reflect what actually happened in the real world. As a result, the fact that when one drives the car it has different emissions than in that test is just a factor of the type of test it is. We cannot wait for it to move to real driving emissions because we are buyers of the technology in Ireland. As we do not make them, we can choose the very best. From our point of view, such a test will involve a portable laboratory, if one likes, towed behind a vehicle to actually measure it as it is driving along. The reason it will take time - that is, until 2017 to deliver it - is to make sure the test cycle is identical for each manufacturer for each vehicle to make sure they are completely consistent. However, when one considers the national car test, NCT, the problem is we do not currently test for NOx emissions at these periodic tests. It is not part of the European requirement but this current debate might well change that.