Ms Justice Mary Laffoy:

In terms of Deputy Pringle's first observation about Government acceptance versus citizen acceptance, the latter is crucial because the Government could be in difficulty if the citizens did not accept. In the real world, citizen acceptance is crucial and that is what we should be striving for, namely, to get the citizens to accept what is right. Deputy Pringle also made reference to taking account of rural areas and of course, that is necessary. The Deputy mentioned the transport sector in particular and one of the points made was that measures should be introduced to progressively disincentivise the purchase of new carbon-intensive vehicles such as year-on-year increases in taxes on petrol and diesel as well as in motor and purchase taxes. We are looking at ways of incentivising people to behave. Deputy Pringle pointed out that cars are more necessary in Donegal than in Ballsbridge and that is unquestionably true. Transport in rural areas will have to be taken into account in the measures adopted. There must be a proper balance and fairness. It is difficult to see how one achieves that but there are ways of doing it. We could have more public transport in rural areas. That may be the way it has to be done. I do not know.