The Republic of Ireland has been sent a final legal warning note alleging that its government has failed to implement a EU scheme for monitoring CO2 emissions from new passenger cars.

Under the scheme, Member States are supposed to send data to the European Commission annually, with the deadline for producing the first information report being July 1, 2001.

Brussels is claiming that Dublin missed this deadline and if the Irish government does not say within two months how it will comply with the regulation, the Commission may ask the European Court of Justice to order it to produce the statistics and henceforth on time.