Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is all fine and dandy but we are talking about reducing our carbon dioxide emissions and we are not doing very well on that front. I do not understand the sense of urgency being given to this issue because we are way behind. There is very little mention of home charging points and there are question marks over whether the grid can sustain the load if several people with electric cars in the same street all plug in at the one time. It is Sinn Féin's belief that we need to get into home charging, particularly if we are phasing out the current system.

I heard the point about the ten-year phase-out, which is to be welcomed. I take it the ESB does not have to stop next month or the month after, and that it can be phased out. The Minister also made the point about there being one charging point for every four cars but that simply shows there is not the take-up we require. We need to look at this scheme again. One of the places we could start is with public service vehicles and local authority vehicles that are doing short runs. The milk carts of 30, 40 and 50 years ago ran on batteries. Surely it is not beyond the imagination and engineering ingenuity of this generation to get such vehicles running on electricity in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I want the Minister to take up with his Department officials the whole issue of home charging, which I do not think they are giving the urgency it needs.

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