Mr. John Martin:

I will pick up on that point regarding e-bikes. The modelling we have includes what is referred to as a cycling propensity factor, which is, in essence, a measure of how likely people are to cycle and over what distance. We can ramp that up and down. The uptake of e-bikes over the past couple of years has increased very quickly and, fortunately, we are seeing a significant number of them on the roads. This is particularly the case in the wake of the Covid period, when the supply chain issues around e-bikes began to loosen out and the prices came down. If we were having this conversation three years ago, there would have been a fraction of the number of e-bikes on the road compared with what we are seeing now. It is an evolving technology and we are getting much cheaper e-bikes into the market. I will not name brands but there are much cheaper models becoming available. One can buy an e-bike for less than €1,500 now, which one could not do two or three years ago. It is very much a developing area and it something to which we need to react.

I cannot answer directly as to whether the modelling that was done for CAP21 fully incorporated the potential for people to replace longer 5 km to 8 km journeys with journeys by e-bike. It is something that certainly can be looked at. These are the sorts of things we have recognised in the carbon budgets and the timing of those budgets. New technologies will be coming along and we will have to respond and adapt to them and try to harness the benefits they can give us as and when they come along. This is a perfect example of that.