Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am mindful that during the Celtic tiger in the noughties people were driving Range Rovers and other such vehicles around Foxrock. I said to a friend of mine that I wondered why they were driving the vehicles. He said that when they bought the vehicles, they got a pair of wellingtons too. They would go to the ploughing championship once a year to try out four-wheel drive.

I am interested in what Dr. O'Grady said about early adapters. People adapted to electric vehicles before they were quite ready and before the market had settled in. When I bought a car recently, I was mindful about buying a dual fuel or hybrid vehicle. The salesman in the garage told me not to. He said that the battery is too heavy for it and it causes a problem with the suspension in the car. Even though my car has an internal combustion engine, it has all the technology to tell me when I am saving fuel. The difference between 120 km/h and 100 km/h is amazing when it comes to the cost of running it. Not every family wants to buy a great big four-wheel drive vehicle. For the average family to buy a little Yaris to run around in or a small electric car the cost is still too high. We have to do something if we are serious about moving in this direction.

Another problem we have is that people tend to change their cars every three or four years. This will become a problem. The carbon cost of manufacturing the car is probably 20 years. How many 20-year-old cars do we see on the road? There are very few. A lot of education and a lot of cultural change must take place. Is the Department doing anything about this?