Mr. Declan Meally:

To bring it back to the Deputy's point on the chicken and egg scenario and how one decides when buying a car at the moment, what we have seen through our behavioural economics team is that there are three stages - contemplation, investigation and decision - when one is buying a new technology. What we are seeing is that as more people own an electric car and then speak to their neighbours about it, people are getting that information and trying out an electric car. The reality is that, as we stated, 80% or more of charging will be done at home. The person will have a car that will take him or her 400 km or 500 km around County Clare. Most people overestimate the journeys they are doing and underestimate the cost they are paying for fuel. The decision to make that jump from diesel or petrol to an electric car starts to come with seeing EVs on the road, picking up the information from neighbours and friends and then realising that if a car has a range of 400 km or 500 km, it will only have to be charged once or twice a week and that it will only be charged at home. The cheapest tariff one can get for charging the car is to do so overnight at home. Those are the decisions people make before deciding which car they want. There are many people now who want to switch but cannot do so because of the supply chain constraint. As regards the charging infrastructure, however, it is not about having charging points across the county because everyone has a three-pin plug socket into which one can plug the car and charge-----