Mr. James Nix:

The legal questions around bans are really interesting. For example, there is political momentum in northern Belgium - Flanders - to ban new sales of fossil fuel vehicles five years earlier than the EU phase-out, so around 2030 rather than 2035. This issue is causing a huge amount of debate here in Brussels. Is it legally possible? There are different views on it. What is clear is that it needs to be very rigorously justified from an environmental perspective to overcome the Single Market rules that essentially state that when a vehicle is type-approved under EU law it should be allowed to be sold in every single member state. By the way, on that issue it will probably take more member states to join with regions such as Flanders to insist on the 2030 end of internal combustion engine sales to flush out, if you like, that legal issue which, to me, is important to do in order to bring clarity to this regulatory area.

To go back to Professor Daly's points about French advertising rules, they are very interesting and well worth looking at. From 2028, it will not be lawful to advertise vehicles with more than 123 g of emissions per kilometre. It is a fair criticism that this is too little, too late but the direction of travel can be seen.

To pick up on Deputy Paul Murphy's point, I certainly think we could explore and identify a weight level for the internal combustion engines of a number of vehicles and pick out a particular weight level. The same could be done for electric vehicles and the advertising of such vehicles could then be banned. There is, therefore, much more flexibility around advertising bans than there is around sales bans.

The Deputy's points are well made. We do not talk much about tyre particles at all. If we look at particle pollution in the ocean, according to some estimates, almost half of it is in some way linked to vehicles. I am referring to tyre wear, road wear and brake wear and the heavier vehicles get, the more particles go into water courses and, ultimately, the oceans.