Mr. Michael Rowland:

Looking at incentivising the use of personal protective equipment, PPE, and whether we could explore the reduction of VAT is one of the actions in the road safety strategy. As a consequence of that, we wrote to the Secretary General of the Department of Finance. We were advised that because of EU rules relating to VAT, there was no scope for the reduction in VAT on PPE because of the EU VAT directive on PPE. It was an action in the road safety strategy and we did follow it up with the Department of Finance.