Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

May I interject? I could be wrong on this, but this is my understanding. The policy to change from petrol to diesel in cars was to reduce CO2 emissions. Effectively whether it is based on the Euro 6 standard or whatever, diesel is effectively low on CO2 emissions. However, having switched over a vast quantity of cars, the particulate pollution, which is the particulates in the exhaust emissions that cause problems particularly to big European cities with very little air movement during warm summer periods of summer, massively mushroomed. It is two different forms of pollution. I am not sure whether diesel engines - the particulate pollution that we are talking about there - my understanding is that it is not a main contributing thing. If we shift completely away from diesel engines back to cars, we will reduce particulates pollution so we will purify the air in the immediate city, probably Dublin only, but we will actually run the risk of driving up CO2 emissions unless the shift was done to electric vehicles. Even going back to petrol vehicles would run the risk for us. That is my understanding of the evidence we were previously given on that. That seems to tie in with what has been said.