David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response and I agree with most of what he says here. The issue with respect to home charging is important. You can charge at a cheaper rate overnight and so forth, which is good. That needs to be expanded as well, by the way. The big issue I and some of my colleagues have encountered, however, is the dearth of charging facilities on the motorways and, in fact, in rural areas. The apps are quite complicated. Quite often, the chargers do not work properly, and there is a queue as well. If we are going to increase the number of EVs, and the number is increasing, with people buying more of them, we need to ensure we have the en routecharging facilities available.

Do not forget as well the maximum range from an EV is 400 km to 500 km, which is different from a diesel or petrol car, which can be up to 1,000 km in some cases. This shows the need to have more charging points on roads and motorways - en route, in other words. I take the point with respect to sports clubs, community centres and so on, but they will actually be slow chargers. They take a while to charge a vehicle, like the ones in the Leinster House complex, whereas fast charging en routeis what we really need. They need to be covered over so that people are protected from the elements, they need to be user-friendly, and they need to be accessible. People with disabilities and so on also need to be able to use them easily, and that is not the case at the moment with some of these. They are away in a corner somewhere, hard to find and hard to get at, and maybe only one vehicle can pull in at a time. This needs to be addressed, and pretty quickly or otherwise people will lose confidence in these cars, people will stop buying them and the number will drop.

So far, I am happy with ZEVI and what it is doing. It needs to do it faster and better, and that is my message today - to move this on quickly. I know the ESB has a huge investment planned for this as well. This is the future and the way to go, but the user experience at the moment is not actually great.

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