Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am disappointed by the Minister of State's lack of urgency. With regard to EVs, he is saying work is under way to look at the needs of estates that do not have driveways and multiple units that do not have charging points beside their car parking areas. This has been an obvious defect. We have had a grant in place for three years for the councils to put them into lamp poles or onto the side of the road, but not one council has taken it up. There needs to be a sense of urgency that councils have a responsibility for climate action plans. They are all producing plans but they are sitting on their hands when it comes to these practical measures.

The heat controls are not accessible through the 80% grant, even though a manufacturer I know claims a 25% reduction in heat use can be achieved in any home - no matter what the household is using, it can achieve that reduction. That is real, tangible change. I reckon, just on the back of the envelope, that if we rolled out a significant programme to those homes and reached even a third of them we would save 5 million tons of CO2. That is not far off 10% of our total carbon emissions. That is something we could target. We could do the same with the 1.75 million smart meters. If they even took 0.3 megatonnes off their electricity - if they reduced it by 0.3 megatonnes - you would have another 3 million tonnes by activating just half of those smart meters.

The same is true of pushing up the EV purchasing rate. They now pay for themselves over their lifetime, so we are not asking people to incur a big penalty by going to EVs. They are actually saving money for themselves. I ask the Government to look at these easier measures that are more accessible to wide numbers of people. To confront the climate crisis, we need everyone to have the sense that they are part of it and not waiting five or ten years for the big project to come to town.

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