Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is one of the points I asked about earlier. Again, it is just one of those amendments that seems so eminently sensible. My understanding is that in their development plans local authorities will have policies with respect to e-charging and car parking and, therefore, when applications go in, depending on what is in those individual development plans, conditions could be attached to a grant of planning, if there was not already a request in.

This goes back to the Minister of State's point about the fact that local authorities can do this anyway but the problem is that, first, there is not a consistent approach across all local authorities. Second, even within local authorities, and within the same geographical area, we could have a situation where one development could have quite a lot of e-charging and parking, another can have some, and one could have none.

He knows my argument that there needs to be very clear demarcation on what is the responsibility of central government policy and what is the subsidiarity responsibility of the local authorities. If it is not even explicit, that means it is less likely to get done. It is not good enough to say that parking includes all parking when we know in the real world that is not what happens. Generally, parking means car parking in the traditional sense. We have lots of constituents who are buying homes – in my view ones that are too expensive – in Adamstown, but they are buying them, and one of the big problems is far too few of them have e-charging points and then, depending on the ESB set-up, the ducting and the road network, they may or may not be able to get them connected. Some are multi-unit developments with owners' management companies, OMCs, where it is not straightforward even in the case of a homeowner with a stand-alone house because one has to get permission from the OMC. This amendment seems to be a simple and obvious one.

I made the point repeatedly yesterday and I will make it repeatedly in other sessions, that it is remarkable that it does not seem that any meaningful consideration has been given to some of these amendments. If the Minister of State's response is going to be that he will take a look at it, what is the point of having Committee Stage if the amendments are not looked at before people come in? I say that in genuine frustration.