Mr. Peter Strachan:

We acknowledge the overall Government rail strategy and have contributed a few comments to that, given it is very much a higher-level, strategic approach for the country. The Deputy is right. To go back to a previous point, 15 years ago or even ten years ago, we would have said that the way to decarbonise was to put wires up everywhere, be that on a 1,500 DC or a 25 KV system. Now, we are much more in the space of thinking innovatively around what we can do and where we can extend the reach of battery traction or discontinuous electrification, to which the Deputy referred. In the next four to five years, we will see many good examples, particularly in mainland Europe, where all of the bugs in those systems have been proven and dispensed with. I would draw the committee's attention to the Bordeaux tram, which was world-leading in terms of being a continually free tram product about 15 years ago. Everybody looked at that and said, “When they have made that work in Bordeaux, we will think about getting some ourselves.” I think we are at that point in terms of discontinuous and tri-mode. There are still quite a lot of bugs to get out of the system in certain places, but we are on the cusp of proof of concept. Many of the rolling stock manufacturers and infrastructure providers would tell us we are there right now, but I would like a bit more time before we say that is what we should do. Are we alive to that? Very much so.