Dr. Aoife O'Grady:

The question about the EV infrastructure and the lamp post pilot is proper to us. I will mention a couple of things on that. We are very interested in what is happening in Fingal. We have been funding the public points scheme in local authorities over the year; we would like to see a pilot for lamp posts funded through that this year. It is something we are hoping to encourage. There are a couple of challenges with it, however. I always feel the job of the public servant in these situations is to say that it is a bit more complicated but it is a bit more complicated. This is just to flag these issues.

At the moment, my understanding is that the energy to lamp posts across local authorities across Ireland is unmetered. The Fingal pilot and a similar one in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown are being run from a couple of lamp posts and the local authority is absorbing the cost of the energy that is being provided to EVs. Installing meters on a lamp post is obviously a bigger infrastructural challenge than just being able to install a charger so there is that challenge.

One of the things we are looking at is trying to see if a solution is possible for this. In Germany and in the UK, a person can purchase a certified self-charging cable for his or her vehicle that actually runs a meter on the cable itself. A person can plug it in and that is then metered.

We are trying to see if we can get a certification of that. That also involves interaction with the energy companies in provision and supply of that. The last thing on that is with the upgrade of street lighting across the country, it does become a possibility. However, in many of the older lampposts, the wiring would be insufficient to support an EV, multiple EVs on the street, as well as providing the lamppost charging. However, I would hope that there would be - horrible word - "synergy" across these issues. At the same time as doing a lighting upgrade, we could look at using the same facility for EV charging. Another-----