Ms Marie Donnelly:

Of course, yes. If one has a fossil fuel car, yes, one can still drive it, one should be able to get insurance for it, one can sell it. If one can find a petrol station that still exists by that stage one can "tank it up", as the case may be, with petrol or diesel. It must be remembered that the difficulty we have with charging and the insufficiency of electric vehicle, EV charging points now is likely to go in reverse for fossil fuel stations going into the future. As the number of fossil fuel cars diminishes, so too will the services supporting them. We are likely to see an inversion of the pattern there. This is a provision that affects the manufacturers of cars, not the individual owners of cars. People have time to think about the car in that context.

On converting the existing fossil fuel cars to electric, I know that there are some companies which do that, but they tend to do it for vintage cars and that type of car. Regarding a wholesale basis, quite honestly, we have not looked at that in the council. I cannot comment as to whether it makes sense or not. I know that the number of pieces that go into an EV car are approximately 1,000 units less than what goes into a fossil fuel car. However, that is about as far as my knowledge goes on that. I am afraid I will have to get an expert to come in and give the committee more detail on it. Somebody gave me that piece of information.

On insurance, I have written to Insurance Ireland, because one of the concerns the council has is around commuting.

People are spending many hours a day in their car going to and from work. It is one person per car. One of the suggestions we are making to employers, for example, is to facilitate car sharing among their workforce. This might mean slightly changing the time people start work, putting a buddy system in operation, etc. One of the questions that came up was around the insurance implications for the person who is driving the car. We have written to the insurance association about that. The letter, which is on our website, confirms that there are no negative impacts on the insurance of the driver in a car buddy system like that.