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

Absolutely. First, on what the Cathaoirleach has said about greenways, it is very true that their popularity meets so many different needs. We need to design greenways. I always say to TII, to which we have given the task, that it must remember that this is for local use first and foremost. The local use might be someone cycling, jogging. Its primary care might be for those going for a walk and that everyone else has to respect that local need because it has to work for everyone. Cyclists have to yield or be respectful of pedestrians but then there can be a whole range of different uses. One could go fishing on a greenway by a bank or river and it is a case of seeing them as that important architecture for local communities right across the country. That is really important.

On electric vehicles, the Cathaoirleach is correct in saying that we have seen a slowdown in 2024. That has been right across Europe but less so worldwide as in China and elsewhere, they are really taking off. In Europe, in particular however, there was a reduction in the demand in the past year compared with the previous year. There are, in my mind, a variety of different reasons for that. It is complicated. The primary reason was changes in the second-hand value of the EV market, which made people uncertain, particularly if one had a three-year leasing model where one might have to purchase the full vehicle back at the end of the year or, indeed, in selling it on. If one is uncertain at what the second-hand value is, that hinders the confidence in the purchase of new EVs.

There are separate issues. The issue of range anxiety was an issue in the public mind but in my sense, particularly in Ireland, this is one we can address for a variety of reasons. First, we actually have a widespread network of EV charging infrastructure compared with other countries. We had one of the first roll-outs of EV charging infrastructure but there is a certain concern around the ability to get access vehicles, particularly if one does not have one on one's driveway but also on having more destination charging points in other areas. We had to make a strategic decision in 2023 into the 2024 budget, where we reduced the EV grant. Some people argued that perhaps that should not have happened. I do not think that was the primary reason because in truth, the actual price of new electrical vehicles continued to fall and fell quite significantly. The reason we made that decision was not necessarily to disadvantage EVs, obviously, but was because we faced the choice of making an investment decision in the charging infrastructure and we wanted to prioritise that to overcome those range anxiety concerns. We allocated a €100 million budget to that, which is very much starting to kick in. We will start to see in the summer of next year the roll-out of the high-speed motorway charging infrastructure. We will see the roll-out to 200 sports clubs of EV infrastructure supported by the State. We are also advancing the local authority plans.

I agree with the Cathaoirleach on his assessment on the long time that has taken. Local authorities, for a variety of different reasons, have been reasonably poor. I believe that the Cathaoirleach's own local authority, Fingal County Council, was one of the better ones but it has not delivered as quickly as we would want. We are starting to see real investment beginning to take place but that was something which took longer and was more protracted than it should or could have been.

There is one other project which may help in that regard and, again, it is taking some time. We are committed to using funding from the Climate Action Fund to set up mobility hubs. We will probably take three locations, two cities and a large town, where we will put in some innovative EV charging for both bikes and cars for car sharing and bike sharing and that will complement what the local authorities are doing. That is only one of the widespread and wide variety of measures on which we are starting to spend that €100 million in respect of the charging infrastructure, as well as what the private companies are doing. I had a meeting last week with the Electric Vehicle Charging Alliance of Ireland, which represents about half a dozen companies. There is competition and there is a variety of suppliers and they were telling me that even aside from the Government-supported charging locations, that they are continuing to invest very significantly. Consequently, I believe we can overcome that.

The slowdown in EV sales is starting to taper off and we are beginning to see it rising again. When the issues of second-hand values, fleet and leasing are resolved, it will really accelerate further again.