Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)

I thank the Minister for coming in and giving the presentation. I also thank his officials. I start off by paying tribute to John Mulhern and his team in Kerry Airport who steered the airport through Covid. I recently used the new arrivals department there. It was great to be into your car within ten minutes of the plane hitting the ground in Kerry Airport. I just wanted to pay tribute to John and his team.

I have a couple of questions. It has already been mentioned that the responsibility of the Department is for people and places to be sustainably connected. Under subhead A, there is a question mark about the downscaling of Government ambition, given the funding for greenways is down by €5 million, the Revised Estimates Volume for active travel infrastructure for 2025 is 10% less and there are no new rail carriages. I am concerned about this and it is a point that has been brought up by others.

The Minister touched on the issue of the EV charging network. There are seven EV posts for every 10,000 people in this State, which compares unfavourably to an EU average of 20 and 13 in Britain. We seem to be way behind. The number of people considering the purchase of EV cars is still very low. They need to have confidence, first, that the battery will take them far enough, but also that they will be able to recharge around the State, and there seems to be a deficit in that regard. The Climate Change Advisory Council recently said that the Government scheme does not support lower income families, impedes EV growth and jeopardises emissions targets. That is particularly acute in rural areas, where the benefit of having an EV car is 35% higher because of the longer journeys that are taken in rural areas.

Those are my questions, although some issues have already been dealt with.