Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is quite right about transport being a great challenge and the need to get people out of their cars. That is our objective. The Deputy will have seen the numbers for public transport. The numbers using rail and bus have increased immensely in recent years. The problem until recently was capacity. There has been an immense increase, however. That has been actually a success of the Government's policies in moving people out of cars. There is a great deal more still to be done, however. There is terrible congestion but to say we failed completely is somewhat unfair.

The Deputy has seen the targets for EVs. This is an anti-pollution driven initiative and the targets are very ambitious. Our intention is to hit them. We have clearly stated we want to have 936,000 EVs on the road by 2030. This is particularly to help the environment. The Deputy claims an electric vehicle is out of the reach of some people's costs. He is correct and it is difficult. We have given out grants of €5,000 and introduced other generous incentives for EVs, of which the Deputy should be aware, which include grants for chargers at home and lower motor tax. To say we have underfunded EVs is probably a little unfair because the grants are generous.

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