Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I support everything that my colleague, Deputy Stanley, said about home parking. We do not need pilot projects for a couple of aspects, only common sense. People need to be able to charge at home and where they go ultimately. The majority of trips are to work or shopping centres. People park in the environs of their workplaces or public or private car parks.

The Department and the Government need to develop incentives for workplace and private car parks to put the infrastructure in place. We have a Mickey Mouse operation at the moment, with a couple of high-visibility points around St. Stephen's Green and other places like it that few people will ever get to use. As the Minister stated, the ratio of points to cars is adequate at 1:4, but we should not even be thinking like that. If we want a seismic shift in behavioural change, doubters of this technology need to see a free space everywhere they park. In addition to financial incentives, they would then know that they could charge in a public car park, at a filling station or in their work environs. That requires State incentives.

Roads used to be ass-and-cart dirt tracks but, with the advent of Henry Ford's invention, people had the foresight to start building infrastructure that could carry that type of vehicle in current volumes. The Government needs to get into that kind of mindset and put key infrastructure in place. If the Minister can make the shift and begin that process, he can dispense with some of his pilot projects and little groupings that are operating in the background. He knows where this needs to go. Make the big move and incentivise workplaces, car park owners and others to get there.

See this speech in context