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

I thank Deputy Kenny for his kind words at the beginning of his contribution.

Local Link is part of Connecting Ireland. It is not just Local Link, Bus Éireann runs a number of the services as well. This is an NTA-led scheme. The first phase was designed as a five-year programme. We are about halfway through that. It has had an incredible start. We were rolling out a new or revised bus service every week for the first two years. We now have a range of additional services we want to introduce. We will have to manage our budget to allow us to that. There is a wider challenge within our Department with the public service obligation we need to pay to run all of the public transport services. It is not just Connecting Ireland, it is also all of the Bus Éireann interurban services, Dublin Bus services and other services. That is something we will manage this year. I expect that we may require a Supplementary Estimate by the end of this year to make sure we close the gap that exists in respect of the public service obligation. The latter is complicated, particularly as it relates to the Department of Social Protection's budget as well as that of our Department. I am very confident that we will be able to deliver that.

In October's budget, we will be able to provide real clarity around public service funding into next year. That will allow many of the services - such as the ones the Deputy mentioned - that are ready to go but that need financial certainty to be rolled out. In any event, the nature of the way this has worked, looking at the past two years, is that most of the services may have been planned during the year but we would have typically started to introduce them towards the end of the year. It will be similar this year. That is the pattern we have adopted. We tend to get many new services coming in at year-end or early in the new year. I am confident that the five-year Connecting Ireland plan will be delivered. It is proving to be extremely successful. If anything, it has exceeded expectations such has been the public demand.

We have a separate issue when it comes to Local Link. We have contract arrangements with the Local Link companies that we have to manage. Those companies provide the vast majority of the Connecting Ireland services. I am confident we can do that and that we can provide greater certainty, longer term timeframes and so on in order that the valuable work the companies do is supported. That is also in the mix in terms of what we need to do in the coming months.

With regard to car hire and electric vehicles, there has been a wider slowdown and, in some instances, a reduction in the uptake of electric vehicles. This is not the case if plug-in hybrid vehicles are included. More than half of new electric vehicles are of the plug-in variety. If those are included, the level of uptake continues to grow. The pure battery electric vehicle options have seen a certain decline, not just in Ireland but pretty much across the western world. There is a variety of issues involved. As the Deputy said, these include range anxiety and the availability of charging infrastructure. In the past year, second-hand vehicle values have also had an impact.

Now, that will not impact car hire, but its wider impact and the cost of repair have been some of the issues where we have seen it happen. On the issue of charging infrastructure, I am confident we will be able to and are resolving it. The number of public charging points available increased from about 1,700 in September 2022, less than two years ago, to 2,400 now. A whole range of schemes exist in this context. We launched our EV national charging plan in May this year. A whole range of schemes exists. These are fully funded and we have allocated €100 million to them. These will now start to be rolled out and my understanding is that TII is on the point of contracting for many of these endeavours. It will begin with the most important. On the main motorway networks, where under European legislation we will be required to do it, we are going to deliver banks of fast chargers on time. These will allow people to charge their cars in the time it takes to go in and get a cup of coffee and the paper, or whatever, and come back out to the car. That network already exists from many private operators, but we are going to back up that infrastructure with support and funding to ensure the motorway network is fully serviced for fast charging.

At more destination charging areas, we are going through the process of selecting the 200 - I think - sports clubs that will be able to avail of their location for charging points. This will mean it will be possible to go to training or a match, to watch the kids, or whatever, and the car can be charging during that time. This scheme, too, is fully funded and in roll-out mode.

One scheme that is probably taking longer than I would have liked it to have done, and longer than it should have, concerns the local authority infrastructure charging networks. This initiative is now also in train. The local charging infrastructure in the cities, including Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and some others, is more ready to go. Ironically, this is an area where urban Ireland may have more of a challenge than rural Ireland. This is because the vast majority of the houses in a county like Leitrim, for example, do not have the charging problem that can exist in Dublin, where there may be terraced rows of houses and the question arises of how to park cars when there are no driveways. Most of the houses in Leitrim, though, do not have this problem. Charging at home will still account for, and we want it to account for, about 80% of all charging. This is because it is cheaper, better for the grid and better in so many different ways. In terms of decarbonisation, too, if we can switch rural areas to the use of electric vehicles, this will give us a much bigger bang for our buck in climate terms because travel distances tend to be longer. It really does work.

I could go on because there are several other charging initiatives we are putting in place, including in the midlands in the context of the EU just transition fund. We have 60 to 80 chargers planned for that area. I take the point that was made. We are going to deliver all these chargers and this will be part of the solution to enable us to see the adoption of EVs taking off further. They are better cars, cheaper to run and cleaner for the environment. Every which way, they are better. There will, therefore, be an inexorable switch away from the use of fossil fuels and towards the use of EV cars.

I am sorry for taking so long, but regarding the Luas, I happened to be at the very first trip taken on it. I was a TD for Dublin South at the time and spokesperson on transport. I also had a particular interest in it, having lobbied for the Luas for decades. I was at its 20th birthday on Sunday. Every time we start to invest in public transport or, indeed, to put in some of the demand management measures this strategy sets out, there are also people who say this approach will never work and will bring disaster. Lo and behold, the exact opposite takes place. People want public transport, prefer quieter streets and like it when we improve the public realm. At this stage, I cannot think of an example of a public transport project that we have had to withdraw because of a lack of demand, or of a traffic management measure to promote sustainability and quieter environments we have had to reverse because people said it did not work or they did not want it. These initiatives do work. It is just that change is difficult. It is also the case that it is politically advantageous for some to play up people's concerns for electoral benefit. That is not actually serving the people in the end.