Manus Boyle (Fine Gael)

I wish to address the lack of electric vehicle, EV, chargers. People are getting frustrated. Everyone I talk to likes their wee electric car but there are serious problems with the infrastructure. Electric car sales are good and that is good as it shows we are going in the right direction. However, I was approached by a man at the weekend about charging infrastructure. He headed off down to the hospital in Galway and on the way he wanted to charge his car. When he got as far as Ballindine the chargers were full. He went on to Tuam and it was the same. He made it to his hospital appointment, which was great. Then he started looking for a charger but could not get one. He headed back, but when he got to Tuam all the chargers were full again and it was the same in Ballindine. He had to go to Claremorris to find a charger, which added two hours to his journey. There should be chargers on that stretch of road.

When I was in Killybegs a Portuguese man was hooking up his car and I went over to him to chat to him and see how it was going. He was very annoyed. He showed me the map. When you leave Killybegs there is only one charger in Falcarragh, one in Gweedore, two in Dungloe and only one in Glenties. We are taking tourists in here and we are promoting everything, yet we are not putting the infrastructure in for these people to come. I would like it if we could have a debate on it. The EVs are starting to work, but they are not going to work in rural areas like Donegal. I can see us going back to diesel cars because the infrastructure simply is not there. Is there anything the Government can do or can we do something through Europe to get these filling stations funding to put in chargers? The man I spoke to told me there were three chargers for every fuel pump in Portugal. We would be lucky to have three on the whole road from Galway up to Donegal, which is a road the Leader knows. It is something that needs to be looked at seriously. Maybe the Leader could see what he can do for me.