Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will begin with the Deputy's question on infrastructure. It is primarily delivered by the ESB and great progress has been made. We have just under 1,000 recharging points across the country and approximately 97% of all of our targets for the delivery of recharging points have been met.

The challenge facing us is the number of vehicles using the points. For a variety of reasons, only half of the number of cars that we estimated would be purchased are using the recharging points. Often, there is great interest in and demand for transport options but we do not have the infrastructure. In this case, we have the infrastructure but, partly because of price, but more significantly because of the length of journey that some of these vehicles can make, the uptake has not been as large as we had hoped. However, the quality of vehicle is already changing. As it does, we must consider how to drive the use of electric vehicles even further. Meeting the challenge of fulfilling our stringent climate change commitments will be more difficult unless there is a step change in the use of these vehicles.