Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Such walkways are social, healthy and more secure, which is important in light of recent events, God help us. The Senator is right. LED lighting could be a way of delivering on that. It uses a fraction of the energy and has a lower operation and installation cost. The lights are smaller but provide strong, downward light. They do not cause a serious light pollution issue. As the Senator said, we should look at solutions like that to promote walking in every way. The key point in respect of both greenways and those routes is that they should not just be for power walking. They should be used for kids to get to school. We should design them in ways that allow people to get to the shops and meet neighbours, thereby joining up communities. They should not just be leisure routes.

On the issue of EVs, this is a challenging and interesting project. I keep coming back to the point I made earlier that the grid is the key in an urban context, for example, where there is an apartment block or a row of houses. If every house gets a heat pump and an EV, there is a challenge as to how we manage the local distribution grid. Also, for more interurban and rural journeys, the big challenge with turning what are currently petrol stations into charging stations is the grid. To do this quickly, we need a lot of power. One of the innovations we may start looking at is aligning our parking with where the power is. For example, if there is a local authority location, perhaps in a town, we would think about putting the parking close to the ESB substation. Rather than bringing the power to where the parking is, we would start parking close to where the power is. The grid is the key constraint. There is an issue with getting the power if there is distance involved. With some of the interurban motorway petrol stations, the difficulty is being close enough to the grid to get real power. We need to start designating, designing and looking for places in the grid where we can put the parking, rather than bringing the grid to the parking.