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

We are only warming up on rural links and the Connecting Ireland rural mobility plan. What is being seen is that the increase in public transport numbers in rural areas is way ahead of anywhere else. There has been a major increase. Leaving that point aside, the Deputy is right in that rural areas are the areas in which EVs will be of most benefit and more easily deployed because we will not have the problem we see in some urban areas in the context of how home charging is addressed. We do want home charging to be the centre of this undertaking, not only because it is cheaper but because we can time it so that it balances our renewable power supply. From that perspective, it is really advantageous. People in rural areas tend to do a large amount of driving, so the emissions reduction we get from EVs in rural areas is better than in urban areas. I absolutely agree with the Deputy's point regarding rural areas. I do not think, though, that we should pitch town against country on this issue-----