Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Spratt and the Department for being here today. There are a number of points I would like to make. With regard to electric vehicles, there has been a very good discussion so far but a number of members have mentioned some of the hesitancy about buying an electric vehicle, putting it on the road and everything involved. I will be very frank. One of the things that puts me off is the lack of infrastructure. I recently met a number of forecourt operators in Clare. They tell me that fast-charging electric vehicle charge points cost in the region of €250,000 per unit. That is a substantial outlay for them to invest in as they would have to take out the old petrol and diesel pumps and put in these units. That needs to be incentivised because it is a bit of a chicken and egg situation at the moment. I will probably be looking at changing my car in the next number of years and while I would love to say that I will move to an electric vehicle, I do not think the infrastructure is there. A lot of people will be a little hesitant until that infrastructure is there. Those who are currently driving electric vehicles are almost like pioneers. They have a good home set-up, with a good charge point at home, and most of them probably have a fairly good set-up in their workplace. For everything in between, there is a bit of a risk element to taking off in that car and trying to head across Ireland and cover serious mileage on the road. We will only see that seismic change in public opinion and in consumer decision-making when we have that infrastructure in place.

Like anyone, every so often I browse through DoneDeal and various online sales sites. When looking at electric vehicles for sale there, one just does not fully know what quality of vehicle one is getting. Of course we have the NCT and that is one metric of how good a vehicle is but maybe we need some form of certification for what is under the bonnet in terms of batteries and electrics. This is probably a poor analogy. I am thinking of the BER certification, where there is a grading of A to F for how good a house is in energy terms. Perhaps we need something in that regard because batteries have a lifespan and if people are going to buy an electric vehicle second-hand, they need to know that it is not near the end of a ten-year cycle and that there are more years in it. That is off-putting for people at the moment. Perhaps that is something the Department might look at.

When e-scooters first appeared they were a real head-turner. People would talk about someone passing them while whizzing down the road on an e-scooter but now they are very much part of everyday life and are here to stay. The fabulous thing about them is that they give people of a younger age a bit of independence from their parents to go down to hurling training, pop over to their friend's house or to go to college. It is great and legislation is coming into play now that will make it a bit safer and more regulated. Again there is an infrastructural deficiency there for e-scooters. There is an opportunity to have public e-scooters in larger towns and cities and I have spoken to some people about trialling them in cities, as well as in some regional towns like Ennis, where they could be used as an alternative way of nipping in around the town centre and getting to the outskirts of a town. That is something that needs to be trialled.

At the moment, in the Government and in the Department, there is a 2:1 ratio of spending on public infrastructure versus roads. I have my own thoughts on that. It is very nice to load the bikes into the boot of the car and head off to the local greenway with the kids at the weekend but for Monday to Friday, getting to work and doing the school runs the road infrastructure of our country is crucial. There are projects both within the national development plan and outside it that local authorities are going to bring to the Department's attention over the next number of years and I hope the Department will continue to push them along. It is important that they are there. This is not Amsterdam or the lowlands of Holland or Luxembourg where there is an immense network of public infrastructure, flat terrain and focal points of villages and towns. Ireland by its very nature is quite scattered in how it has been developed over the years and we need a road infrastructure to bring people in from the peripheral parts of counties into town centres and up to cities. Road infrastructure is a major part of that.

The next point I wish to raise relates to Irish Rail. For the last eight months I have become a bit of a convert to using the train. I will use it this evening to go back to Clare and will bike and train home. I have a few points on that. It is frustrating that the last trains operating in Ireland are around 8.30 p.m. or 9 p.m. There is merit to having a late-night service for getting people from one part of the country to another. The train would not have to be five carriages long. It could be one carriage or two, taking off at 11 p.m. or midnight and bringing people across the country. There would need to be a driver and an inspector on the train and someone at the other end managing the station. It would make public transport even more attractive. This is a small island but public transport virtually shuts down at a certain hour of the evening and that needs to be looked at.

I have rail transport sussed out now. When I first started using the train I was paying extortionate prices for tickets but now I buy my ticket a few days in advance when the Dáil schedule comes out each week. If one is lucky one will get a €13 one-way fare and it is very economical, very fast and very reliable. Contrast that with trying to bring a family of two adults and three kids from County Clare up to Dublin Zoo at the weekend using Irish Rail. I did a calculation of this a while ago. To go this Saturday with a family of two adults and three children would cost €177 return. That is crazy. That was always a rite of passage. I do not know what it was like for people living in Dublin but certainly in the west of Ireland it was a rite of passage for the family to get on a train and there was a buzz about getting that early morning train up to the zoo and back home again. That is now impossible, meaning more people are back in the car. We need to look at the costing model of Irish Rail and public transport because that is simply unviable. People could fly to Manchester or London, or even the Balearic Islands, for that kind of cost.

I am concerned about the national development plan. There has been a debate over the last week about what will see the light of day and how long it will take these projects to develop. I am not so concerned about the document of the national development plan, the wording of it and its structure. What I am most concerned about is the law, the policy and the frameworks that relate to public consultations and objections, and the hold-ups for all these projects. The Killaloe bypass is County Clare, which was mentioned yesterday in the budget speech, is in the national development plan. That was held up for years by a man - I think I am allowed to mention his name as this is in the public domain - called Peter Sweetman, of The Swans and the Snails Limited.