Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

Electrical vehicles offer an increasingly realistic solution in terms of reducing the transport sector's greenhouse gas emissions and Ireland's dependence on imported fossil fuels. There has been very significant global investment in research and development in this field. The technology is now maturing to a point where large scale commercial deployment is looking feasible in the medium term. It is all the more important therefore that Ireland is positioned as a centre for electric vehicles.

Last week, with my colleague, the Minister for Transport, Deputy Noel Dempsey, I launched our plans for the large scale deployment of electric vehicles in Ireland. We are setting a target of 10% of all vehicles in the transport fleet to be powered by electricity by 2020, a figure of approximately 250,000 electric cars on Irish roads over the next 12 years.

My Department is working with the Department of Transport, Sustainable Energy Ireland, the ESB, IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, and other stakeholders to ensure we have a fully cohesive approach in facilitating the development of the electric transport model. We have introduced tax incentives for businesses to purchase electric vehicles, allowing them to write off 100% of the cost of purchase against tax under the accelerated capital allowance scheme. Sustainable Energy Ireland will fund a €1 million project to research, develop and demonstrate electric vehicles nationally and has also published a buyers' guide and a cost of ownership calculator to aid individuals interested in purchasing electric vehicles. Sustainable Energy Ireland also recently published reports on hybrid electrical vehicles and battery electric vehicles. These reports highlight potential measures that could be used to stimulate uptake of electric vehicles in Ireland and they make recommendations on how this might best be achieved.

The collective work to date will be carried on by a national task force which will examine the infrastructure options for the national roll-out of electric vehicles, including street charging. We have sent out a clear message that Ireland is open for business and the work of positioning this country as a centre for electric vehicles will continue over the next number of years, in tandem with global developments in technologies and commercialisation.

See this speech in context