Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

We are making progress. In Ireland it can often be difficult to get infrastructure in place before we do deployment - housing estates in the 1970s being a good example. In this case, however, we have seen a commitment from the ESB to roll out infrastructure and that has happened around the country. Are we at a point where if everyone switched to electric cars tomorrow they would all have ready access to charging stations? No, not yet, but we are moving in the right direction. Improvements in battery technology will also help. It is fair to say that we have not had the take-up that we had hoped for and the Government's own targets are not going to be met by 2020 at the current rate, for example. That said, electric cars have a significant role to play.

We are not advocating petrol over diesel; this is simply about equal treatment of equal pollution, so to speak. We are arguing that diesel should not get special treatment as it does now because while it may be better for the climate, it is worse for local health. In that sense, there is no reason for it to have special treatment. Even leaving aside whether people move to electric cars, if they at least do not continue the rush to diesel, that is better. Ultimately, if the Deputy buys a car tomorrow, it is probably better that he buys a new, efficient petrol model rather than a locally polluting diesel one.