Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Deputy Bruton. The underlying benefit of shared car use and ownership is, as he says, most cars are parked 95% the time and if that cost can be shared, it significantly reduces the cost to the householder, in urban and rural areas. There is a particular problem in urban areas, as the Deputy will know, where we will not be as easily able to deploy electric vehicles with charging infrastructure at home, which is a real advantage. We are right to focus on some of those areas also, so that they have access to sustainable transport solutions. This should and can be deployed right across the country. However, we need to scale it up. That model in Finglas, as I said, there have been teething problems. There will always be problems when starting something new and different. We learn from that and devise and develop further. One of the officials who was involved in that was brought into our Department because he had real expertise in terms of how this might work. It is complicated, particularly providing the charging infrastructure. That is an issue that has to be right but we will be identifying some 200 locations, municipal, public, car-sharing companies being brought in, and that project could be the game changer. It will be a pathfinder project. Once we learn from that, we can deploy more widely elsewhere.

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