Mr. Brian Cooke:

We would certainly be in favour of that. However, we need to be realistic. Someone who is driving a ten-year-old car does not have very much equity to trade in and so the level of that support would need to be very significant. As with all supports, there is a limited pool of money to support the purchase of EVs. The pool of money in the short term should be aimed at getting as many new EVs on the road now as possible. That means that in three years, more people who buy three- or four-year-old cars will have a bigger selection, and in six years, people who buy six-year-old cars will have a bigger selection and so on. In an ideal world, we would be very supportive of that. The most important thing is to help the people who are about to buy a new car, on the back of having equity in a used car, to make a better decision.

In the context of the cost of change, €5,000 is a lot of money. Even if an EV costs €40,000, the cost of changing in that context might be €16,000 or €17,000. That is a lot of money and that can be a real game changer.

The other important thing I must underline about incentives is that we are competing for a supply of cars. There is a shortage of not only used cars in Ireland now but also of new cars. There is a shortage of EVs overall and every market is competing for them. We cannot get enough of them now, so the better the incentive package we have, the better will be the chance that Ireland will get more than its fair share of EVs in the short term. Again, the more of these vehicles we can get today, the faster we can create that used car market in EVs.