Mr. Paul Jackman:

I reiterate Mr. Drennan's point that last year, 99.6% of the HGVs sold in Europe were diesel. There is no practical, functioning alternative at the moment. A grant is available from the Department of Transport for a hydrogen fuel cell truck but no hydrogen fuel cell trucks are available. Grants are available for a CNG or an LNG truck through the Causeway Project but that has been abandoned this year because it is no cleaner than diesel. We have been told by several manufacturers not to buy electric trucks because they are just not functioning. We know they are not functioning. They are not realistic. Diesel is the only option. As the charter went around, it shows just how clean and quiet modern diesel is, as Mr. Drennan mentioned. In our proposal for the budget last year and previous budgets, we came up with a green rebate concept where a diesel rebate came back to the operator of the cleaner vehicles. The operator would be incentivised to go up the emissions scale and buy Euro 6 and would get a rebate on the excise paid. That made perfect sense. In our submission, we exhibited how a 25% reduction in CO2 output would be achieved through accelerating the transition of the modern fleet to Euro 6.