Electric Vehicles
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-26
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Brian Stanley (IND), Laois

I thank the Minister of State for his answer. The strategy being developed needs to look at the reality on the ground and at the geographic locations. You cannot have a situation where there are chargers down the middle of the county but nothing either side of it. If you travel the 28 miles to Carlow from Portlaoise, there are none. On the other side of the county, if you travel down the Slieve Bloom side of it and into Roscrea, there are none. I am highlighting the fact this needs to be included.
I agree with the Minister of State that up to 80% will be done at home and I understand that. In a lot of the locations where there are chargers, such as in towns like Abbeyleix, Mountrath and Rathdowney, there is just one charging point. Mountmellick with its population only has one. That needs to be looked at. They are all expanding towns. In all of those towns, the population has gone up in recent years. It is important there is that service.
I listened to the Minister of State's response and Departments will talk about strategies, phases and all of that.
Some things need to be kept simple or they do not happen. In short, what I am saying here is that this does not take a genius to work out. When you have large geographical rural areas, like the east and western sides of Laois and parts of the south of the county, left out, we need to fix that. I think the Minister of State will agree, given the debates we had in the House this week around fuel costs and the challenges we are facing there, we are going to be moving more to electric and the easier we make it the better. Let us try to make it easy for the motorists, the people in rural areas, who will continue to have to use their cars. Rural transport is shown to be a success. We need to make this a success as well. It will not happen if we leave out rural Ireland.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:47+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-26