Catherine Noone (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

According to health experts, life expectancy is being reduced by nine months because of the ingestion of toxins contained in car fumes. One thousand Dublin buses have diesel engines. In London's transport system, there has been a substantial move away from diesel towards electric and hybrid vehicles. We should take a leaf out of Norway's book in this regard. It has been implementing incentives for 25 years, so it will not happen overnight in Ireland, but according to the latest figures, 37% of new cars bought in Norway last January were electric. This represents the highest rate of electric vehicle adoption globally. In Ireland in 2008, we had an ambition of 200,000 electric cars over the course of ten to 15 years. To date, however, only 2,000 electric vehicles are on the road despite the infrastructure having been put in place. Those who purchase electric and hybrid vehicles in Ireland pay a lower rate of VRT, but Norway has many other incentives than this such as, for example, paying no VAT on new cars, free parking in public car parks, driving in bus lanes, free access to toll roads, free road ferries and lower annual road taxes.In the 25 years Norway has been working on this, the number of electric cars there has reached almost 50%. While I accept that we cannot achieve a great deal over night, we do need to implement, without delay, a lot more policies of the type implemented in Norway.