The recent stand by the Commissioner for the Environment on the health effects of pavement cafes is noteworthy. However, it needs to be made quite clear that, in recognising there is a detrimental effect on health from traffic pollution, this does not magically stop at our favourite café’s front door (and one that is quite often propped open) or at the bakery’s counter.

It is not eating al fresco that is wrong. We need to treat the root cause – the pollution – not the symptom. Al fresco dining is possibly essential to our gross domestic product. Pollution is not.

But is this a fight over public health or parking space? If it really is the first, then, perhaps, it is really time to pedestrianise our al fresco areas. It is also time to curb kerbside pollution once and for all and to get the countless 1970s quarry vehicles that pass for the older end of the commercial vehicle fleet off our town centres and village cores for good.