Mr. Ian Talbot:

I thank the Deputy for the questions. We all become frustrated by those who do not join organisations. Our collective membership across networks is about 10,000, which means that 190,000 companies or trading enterprises are not members of Chambers Ireland. We possibly appeal to certain types of companies. Different policies work at different times.

Tomorrow, we are bringing out a pledge that Chambers Ireland will adopt the sustainable development goals. Issues such as quality of work are key components of that. We are focused on that area.

On the car industry, we are all looking at the numbers for 2030 and the very substantial change we need to make. A key point is that alternatives exist to which people can migrate, but there is a very serious concern that there are not enough charging points for electric vehicles and there are issues around hogging of charging points and so on. In the past 12 months, I have been to Norway and Finland where I looked at the relative performance of those countries. In Norway, every second car is an electric car. This is based on a combination of factors. First, a wide range of incentives is available to encourage people to buy electric cars, including free parking and significantly reduced taxation. In addition, most houses already have a charging point because people plug in their cars during the winter to keep the battery protected. Norway already had an infrastructure that coincidentally enables it to roll out a significant number of charging points very rapidly. That is something we do not have, which presents an extra challenge for us. We need alternatives and we need some sort of carrot and stick incentives. We need more carrots. There is the question of expense. Electric cars for the mass market still look very expensive and until more people globally start buying electric cars and the production lines get more efficient in bringing the prices down, we are facing a challenge. While it is a major challenge, we cannot ignore it and we must continue to make progress. We must make tough decisions on this.

Fuel poverty is a concern and we need the grid to protect the poorest in society who will be disproportionately affected by the imposition of a carbon tax on a bag of coal. We need to invest in the grid infrastructure and alternative technologies to bring forward the opportunity to ensure we can either subsidise people who are challenged or provide viable alternatives.

A major bugbear for Chambers Ireland as a network is that we are constantly calling for capital projects to be delivered as there are constant challenges around finding the investment and with the planning process with projects being deferred. For example, Cork Chamber was very vociferous when the Dunkettle interchange project, which is vital infrastructure for Cork, was deferred for a year. When we explored this issue, we found that an argument can be made that the procurement system is working because the system was saying that we needed to re-evaluate this project to ensure we are getting value for money and do not end up with a big cost overrun. The clock is ticking on all these projects.

Infrastructure projects, such as those relating to more tram lines, DART underground and so on, are not happening quickly enough in Dublin and other cities. Our population is growing and people's quality of life is being impacted upon. This is an enormous issue for us and, to be honest, I think we are all on the same page in respect of it.