Dr. Brian Caulfield:

I thank the Deputy for some insightful questions. I will answer the first question on examples of how to incentivise rural transport. There are some great examples from Scotland, where there is demand-responsive transport. There are smartphone apps. It brings things we have in smart cities into rural areas. They can pre-book trips, etc. There is a great example from Donegal, which is Local Link Donegal. They partnered with Toyota. They use plug-in hybrid vehicles to bring people to medical appointments. There are ways to do this.

The definition of transport is advantage. I submitted a map as part of my opening statement. These areas do not have alternatives to cars. They have high levels of car ownership. They are also defined as "deprived areas" on the basis of the Pobal HP deprivation index. I frame my answer to the second question around captive fleets. I mentioned taxis, of which there are 21,000 in Ireland. Any of those captive fleets that you can hit all at once is where the low-hanging fruit is in the context of policymaking. You only have to look at the great actions that An Post is taking in the context of deliveries and electrifying its fleet in order to see what is possible.