Mr. John Martin:

I will touch on the local authority question very quickly. The NTA is working with all the local authorities to try to roll out as much active travel infrastructure as possible. To be honest, Senator O'Reilly is correct to say that some are better than others. They all experience some degree of challenge and some degree of opposition and resistance, but some are better than others. I will outline what we are doing in that regard. The sustainable mobility policy was launched in April of this year and as part of it we set up a leadership group, which comprises membership from the Department, the NTA, TII and also the City and County Management Association, CCMA, and the regional assemblies, as well as the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. What they are doing is overseeing the implementation of the action plan and of the policies that were set out in the sustainable mobility policy to try to encourage stakeholders - the regional assemblies and the individual local authorities – through the CCMA, to engage more in implementing and developing the infrastructure needed to support active travel. That is happening now. That group was established back in May and we are trying to push that message out to each and every one of the local authorities, through the SMP leadership group, as well as supporting the NTA's work in engaging with the local authorities on a case-by-case basis.

One of the things we are doing as well is that we have set up a delivery team, which is seeking to identify what we are calling pathfinder projects, which would be exemplar or spotlight projects around the country that we can roll out quickly at scale across the country. This covers everywhere, not just specific areas, not just Dublin, but across the whole country that can demonstrate what can be achieved and the benefits of that.

The Department is really pushing that pathfinder programme throughout the whole country to put a greater impetus behind the installation and development of active travel infrastructure around the country, both in urban centres and rural areas.

In regard to rural issues as far as decarbonisation and transport are concerned, some areas are not as well served by public transport as others. We are trying to address that insofar as possible through the Connecting Ireland programme. That will have a big impact and will make a big difference. In addition, we need to communicate and advertise more clearly to people that those resources and routes are available. Sometimes routes are not available to people but other times routes are available and people may just not know about them. It is about getting the message out as far as we can throughout the country that these rural transport services are available to people to use and that they are being invested in and improved. It is important we continue to work on our rural public transport infrastructure, network and services, and promote them to ensure people know they are available for use.

In regard to the issue of EVs in rural Ireland and generally, I will pass back to Dr. O’Grady to pick up on some of the specific points around that.