Mr. Alan Nolan:

My submission tried to underline that decarbonising the fleet is a very complex issue as is rolling out electric cars. There is a danger in looking for a silver bullet and suggesting that suddenly switching to a stronger offering for electric cars would solve the problem. It is a slow process. Norway, the most successful country, reached 100,000 electric cars this year. In no year have 100,000 been sold and Norway has 2.6 million cars on the road. If it was to reach 100,000 a year, it would take 25 years to replace them all. One would hope it would ramp up over a period. Even stopping the sale of internal combustion cars will still mean having a fleet of older cars that will continue to grow older.

We have had a focus on CO2 in the past. CO2 is still a very big issue environmentally. We have an average age of diesel cars in Ireland of 5.6 years. In Norway, the average age is 10.6 years, which is pre-diesel particle filters. We are talking about health and all the rest of it. We need to take a wider view of the issue. We would be very happy with the idea that one could replace all the cars involved by 2025. That would give us a new car market of approximately 300,000 per year and our institute would be really happy with that.

Realistically, we need to look at the whole problem and come up with considered solutions that will actually deliver rather than just being seen to be doing things. We have had targets in the past, such as 10% off the cars on the road or whatever it might be. Targets based on hope rather than on a realistic appraisal of what is possible will always disappoint. Hope is not a strategy. We face a huge challenge and we need to get all the stakeholders involved in order to see how we might drive it forward. It is for us all to make this work.