John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

In addition, my colleague the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, together with the Minister for Transport, will announce in the coming weeks the development of a strategy to have up to 10% of our road transport fleet electrically powered by 2020. The aim is that Ireland should be among the early movers in exploiting recent international advances in electric vehicle technologies, moving from advanced plug-in hybrid vehicles to full electric vehicles which have no direct CO2 emissions.

A particular advantage of this technology is that the vehicles are typically recharged at night, when the electricity system has its lowest load demand. As we move towards increasing our renewable electricity generation, mainly by developing new wind capacity, electric vehicles would provide a useful market for night-time wind generation.

The first full year in which the major taxes on cars are based solely on their emissions will be 2009. This follows the introduction in last year's budget of CO2 based motor tax and VRT. The early indications from the first three months of the new system are of a strong trend towards lower-emission vehicles. Of the 42,000 cars which are now charged motor tax on the basis of emissions, 85% are in the three lowest bands. The increases in motor tax, which I introduced last night, maintain the strong incentive in the system to switch to lower emission cars when purchasing new vehicles, with a higher rate of increase for cars above the 2.5 litre threshold and CO2 bands E, F and G, and no increase for electric vehicles. I intend to keep the motor tax system under review, in consultation with the motor industry, to ensure that it meets the twin objectives of protecting local government funding while incentivising greener motoring in future years.

The Government's vision for the transport sector involves major structural change. This will take time to deliver and to make a significant impact on emissions. In the shorter time period of our Kyoto target, my Department has estimated that the impact of the relevant fiscal and other measures in this budget on transport emissions will average 200,000 tonnes per annum over the 2008-12 period, and this is reflected in the carbon budget table.

In terms of the role that we can expect from the residential sector in meeting our emissions reduction targets, I am determined that the public sector leads the way. I am, therefore, announcing a number of initiatives today that provide a platform for significant progress in this area.

Public housing in Ireland has a long record of achieving high quality by reference to the standards prevailing at the time of construction, but energy efficiency standards are now far higher than when much of our public housing stock was built. Remedial works and regeneration programmes, undertaken by local authorities and funded by my Department, are delivering significant energy efficiency improvements in various locations——

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