Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

In the 18 months since the announcement of the EV upgrade proposal, out of the target 264 charging points that were to be upgraded to 22 kW, only 159 have been delivered. On the target of having 52 charging points upgraded to 50 kW points, only ten have been delivered. As far as I can see, none of the 90 high-power charging points has been delivered so far. That is in 18 months. Even given the delays that inevitably happened because of Covid, this demonstrates that the rolling out of the programme has been painfully slow and not adequate enough.

In countries where there is a high uptake of EVs, the infrastructure was in place before the cars. In Ireland, we are doing it the other way round. We expect people to buy cars without having the infrastructure in place for them. I ask that the Minister provide additional resources to ensure the speedy implementation of this programme. It is important that it be implemented.

See this speech in context