Mr. Richard McMahon:

To elaborate on the road freight survey to which the Chairman referred, I certainly acknowledge that it is quite burdensome. The Central Statistics Office does its best to exclude smaller businesses from this inquiry. We set a threshold for the size of goods vehicles, which means that we exclude all good vehicles of less than 2 tonnes unladen weight. In our sampling we are very conscious of the burden imposed on small businesses. We were active participants in the high level group on the regulatory burden and since 2005 have reduced the response burden for small businesses by between 50% and 60%, which is a significant amount. We are particularly conscious of small businesses.