Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein)
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497. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the cost for 2018, based on 2016 figures, of increasing the electric vehicle grant scheme by €2,000 and €5,000 respectively, in tabular form. [30832/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The Electric Vehicle Grant Scheme provides grant aid of up to €5,000 towards the purchase of a new full battery EV (BEV) or Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV). The scheme, which will be kept under review, is continuing this year and an allocation of €5 million has been provided in my Department’s Vote for this purpose. These grants are in addition to the VRT reliefs of up to €5,000 that also apply to EVs. Budget 2017 extended VRT reliefs on PHEVs to end 2018 and on BEVs to end 2021.

In 2016, the purchase of 638 EVs was supported under the EV Grant Scheme at a cost of over €3 million. The average amount of grant paid was €4,763 per vehicle.

It is estimated that increasing each grant by €2,000 per vehicle would cost an extra €1.276 million. While increasing each grant by €5,000 would add an estimated €3.19 million euro to the total spend under the scheme.

The actual cost in 2016 along with the projected cost of the two outlined scenarios is set out in the following table:

So far in 2017, almost €2.2 million has been spent to support the purchase of 456 new electric vehicles. My Department expects a broadly similar number of Electric Vehicles to be grant aided for the remainder of the year.

The trend over the past three years has been for increasing numbers of new EVs on our roads compared to the previous years and, with a greater choice of models on the market allied to the extension of the VRT reliefs, I would expect that trend to continue.