Mr. Graham Doyle:

We have always had this issue about the perception that there was a direct link between the collection of motor tax revenue and what was ultimately spent on the roads. Motor tax revenues now go directly to the Exchequer in a completely separate process from us negotiating with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform each year through the budgetary process in terms of the allocation that we are able to apply to the maintenance and upkeep of the road network. A clear situation exists this year that motor tax revenues go directly into the Exchequer and we separately negotiate for the funding that we need to distribute to local authorities, both directly by ourselves and also through the national roads piece that Transport Infrastructure Ireland looks after. That change allows us to argue that case entirely separately. To the extent that there was any risk that the fall in motor tax revenues, through the local government fund, represented a risk to our funding in a given year, that risk is now taken away from us because we deal with that entirely separately.