Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I was late to the meeting, but I have listened to all of the contributions. I thank the witnesses for their presentations.

I will pick up on something that Deputy Bruton touched on at the start. I will not say that there was evasion, but we need to dig deeper into this matter, namely, the fact that no EV charging points have been installed by local authorities. This is based on a parliamentary question that I tabled to the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications asking how many EV chargers Cork County Council had installed. The answer was "Zero". The council did not just install zero EV charging points, though. It also did not apply for any funding under the SEAI’s EV public grant scheme, which is specifically for local authorities to provide EV charging points. Interestingly, the Department confirmed in the reply that the council had asked for a single application form. This tells me that the council thought about the scheme, looked at it and then decided that the scheme was not for it.

I find this disappointing. We are seeing more EVs on the road. In future, the majority of people will be charging their EVs at home overnight at lower tariff periods. For tourism areas in particular, public EV charging points will be vital infrastructure, but people are coming up against brick walls and all types of obstacle to providing charging points in their communities and villages. I could provide examples. Durrus is a village between the Mizen Head and Sheep’s Head peninsulas and an incredibly popular tourist destination. It has been trying for years to get an EV charging point through the local authority, failing on every occasion. That is a shame, given the desire in Durrus. An even more disappointing scenario arose in Courtmacsherry, another popular tourist destination. The community-----