I ask everyone to turn off all mobile phones and devices or to put them on silent mode.

Before we begin, I will explain some limitations to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references witnesses may make to other persons in their evidence. Witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the presentation they make to the committee. This means they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege and it is my duty in the Chair to ensure this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. In this regard, I ask any member participating via MS Teams to confirm, prior to making a contribution to the meeting, that he or she is on the grounds of the Leinster House campus. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, I will direct them to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

This afternoon's engagement is on climate and environment-related tax expenditure. From the Climate Change Advisory Council, I welcome: Ms Marie Donnelly, chairperson; Professor Edgar Morgenroth, council member; and Mr. George Hussey, secretariat manager. The committee welcomes the opportunity to engage with the witnesses and I thank them for being here today.

I now invite Ms Donnelly to deliver the council's opening statement.

I thank the committee very much for the invitation to join it today for a good discussion on how the taxation system can help Ireland move to a low-carbon economy. As the Leas-Chathaoirleach has just said, I am the chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council. I am joined by Professor Morgenroth, who is professor of economics at the DCU business school, and Mr. Hussey, who is the secretariat manager. As the committee will know, the role of the Climate Change Advisory Council is to provide independent evidence-based recommendations on policy to support Ireland’s climate objectives.

There is no doubt that the scale of the challenge facing Irish society in addressing the climate crisis is enormous. Unfortunately, our response thus far has been disappointing. The most recent Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, provisional inventories, which are for the year 2024, suggest that emissions have fallen by 12% relative to 2018. Furthermore, the EPA projects that even in the best-case "with additional measures" scenario, our emissions will be only 23% lower in 2030 than in 2018 despite a legislated national target of a 51% reduction.

Analysis by the council, in collaboration with the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, found that the cost to Ireland of missing its EU climate and energy targets could be in the range of €3 billion to €26 billion. That is a fairly wide range. It depends on performance across a range of activities. In respect of Ireland's EU targets, the most objective projection scenario published by the EPA is that Ireland will only reach 22% of its legislated target of a 42% reduction by 2030. Both our national and European targets are very ambitious but they are necessary for Ireland to meet its obligations under the Paris Agreement. It is therefore vital that we employ all the tools at our disposal to help achieve these targets.

The tax system must support the achievement of our climate targets. It can do this by pushing us to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. The council’s carbon budget proposal highlighted that fossil fuels must be phased out as early as 2039 as an absolute imperative, with limited to no opportunity for new investments in fossil fuel systems. Unfortunately, it is still the case that the tax system supports our use of fossil fuels through environmentally harmful subsidies, including exemptions from various fuel and excise taxes.

The Climate Change Advisory Council has made a number of recommendations over the last few years. I will take up three of those points. The first is, of course, the carbon tax. The council has consistently supported Governments in their plans for the carbon tax and the gradual increase to €100 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted by 2030. Recent agreements in the EU regarding a new emissions trading system, ETS, for the built environment and road sectors point to the importance of ensuring the visibility of a strong carbon tax in Ireland but also to the need to ensure that our planning for post 2030 is compatible with EU plans. The post-2030 EU compliance architecture will start to be laid out later this year. Much of it will happen during the Irish Presidency in the second half of this year. In that context, it will be vital that Ireland’s taxation policy be aligned with the European approach. To support a just transition, it is necessary that we have transparency on the use of carbon tax revenues. We also need to ensure the hypothecation of carbon tax revenues is clearly visible and portrayed to the public at large.

At the moment, carbon tax revenues are used to support social welfare supports, environmental measures in agriculture and the retrofitting of our housing stock. It is vital that this feature of Ireland's carbon tax be maintained and indeed strengthened over time.

A second area that the council has commented on is fossil fuel subsidies. According to the Central Statistics Office, CSO, the total budgetary cost of fossil fuel subsidy in Ireland in 2024 was €4.7 billion. A large proportion of these subsidies are indirect in that they relate to differences in the rate of taxation applied to different fuels or are based on the sector using the fuels in question. For example, there is no excise applied to jet kerosene and differentiated tax is applied to diesel as against petrol. These differences are increasingly difficult to justify on any basis and need to be removed. The council has repeatedly called for the Government to remove fossil fuel subsidies because the fuels are responsible for 65% of our emissions.

In addition, to ensure a just transition, we need to ensure the sectors and people most dependent on the subsidies are supported in their low-carbon transition. The revenue saved by the Government in phasing out fossil fuel subsidies should be directed towards helping those most in need to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and ensure their incomes after meeting energy costs are sustained during the transition.

A third area, which we have highlighted repeatedly, is taxation and transport. The low-carbon transition brings many changes, not least to the Government’s tax base. About €5 billion in tax revenue is raised through motor tax, fuel excise duties and the carbon tax. As the economy decarbonises, this revenue base will reduce. The council has explicitly called for a review of taxation in the transport sector to ensure the sustainability of this revenue flow while ensuring the lowest emissions vehicles are preferred, but unfortunately there is limited evidence of change being implemented. Similarly, the excise rates on petrol and diesel should be equalised. Given the impacts on both air quality and climate, there is no reason to favour diesel.

Given the growing economic, social and climate costs associated with congestion, which have been evident of late, the Government needs to be ever more attentive to dealing with the causes of congestion and to show much more agility and speed in implementing solutions in this area. Congestion charging is a measure that should be introduced in our cities as soon as genuine alternatives to car travel exist for those living and working in our cities.

It is becoming clear that Ireland will struggle to meet its national and EU obligations on climate. This failure will entail a significant call on the public purse to pay other EU member states so that Ireland can demonstrate compliance. Minimising these costs not only requires enhanced investments by consumers and businesses, but it is also vital that the tax system provides the clearest possible signal. Ultimately, this signal is that Ireland needs to be free of fossil fuels by the end of the next decade, thereby greatly enhancing our security and competitiveness in the face of an ever more uncertain world. The council is happy to assist the committee in its deliberations. We look forward to our discussion.

I thank the witnesses very much for attending. We all know that if we do not meet the climate targets, there will be massive fines. We do not know how significant they will be. All the measures mentioned are fine and would work, but in many cases they will hurt the most those who are struggling the most. Sometimes we put the cart before the horse. We stopped making briquettes in Offaly and then imported them from Latvia, which is 9,000 miles away. It does not seem to make sense.

Coming up to budgets, I always find that excise costs hurt those who need support the most. Unless such people are getting grants of 100% to retrofit their homes, they will not retrofit them. If we are to ask people not to use turf although they cannot afford anything else, they must be subsidised. It must be made work for them. How else will it work for those who struggle the most? This is where I see a problem.

I thank the Deputy for raising that concern. He is absolutely right. The council, in all its recommendations, has repeatedly pointed to the necessity of a just transition. It is essential that as we go down the route of decarbonising our economy, we leave nobody behind.

Let me refer to a few specific areas that we have already identified. We are very strongly of the view that we need enough social housing to meet the needs of the population. As part and parcel of that, our social housing needs to be brought up to a modern standard. As part of that, the heating and electricity systems must be changed. It is about moving from what might not be good for air quality in a home, such as turf or coal, to a system with an effective heat pump run on electricity that is Irish and sustainable and whose price is managed so individuals can save money on heating bills rather than spend more. This can happen only if people get support. In some instances, it means support of 100%. We have said that repeatedly in our recommendations. In some cases, the support will not need to be 100%. Almost €600 million going towards the retrofitting of houses is coming from the carbon tax. That is the kind of support we need for people to make the transition from fossil fuel-based heating systems, for example, to clean and cheaper heating systems that use, for example, heat pumps or district heating, which is being rolled out only now. We have targeted this.

I am very conscious that social housing is an identifiable category. However, we have in the country an older cohort who might be living in houses that are 30 to 50 years old. They may be approaching retirement and might not be too sure about what to do and how to do it. Therefore, we need to have tailored systems in place to support people on the journey of retrofitting their houses so they can live in warmth and comfort in old age. That is the second area we specifically identified within our earlier recommendations.

We are conscious that the decarbonisation process requires capital investment in many instances. People will need assistance with capital investment. This is really where the Government comes in. I am referring to grants and to supports of 100%, as the case may be. Coming out the other side, it means we will be in a situation in which people will be able to use Irish energy coming from wind or solar. It will be cheaper for them and will allow them to have more comfort in their homes and offices. That is the philosophy of the council when it comes to ensuring a just transition.

We are asked to vote on budgetary measures before there is any transition in place. We must not put people who have nothing under more pressure if help is not available. I cannot do so anyway. The help needs to be in place before we start charging more, in some cases anyhow.

On the point on congestion and the need for genuine alternatives to cars, such as buses and trains, as somebody who has been calling for the Navan rail line for years, I can imagine the thousands of cars that line would take off the road every day.

In places like Navan, people waiting on buses in the morning face buses either showing up full or not showing up at all. A lot needs to be done to get the public transport system right in order to get cars off the road. That could be easily addressed if the finance were put into it.

The Deputy is absolutely right. This is a specific area of concern the council is currently looking at. We are doing an analysis of the amount of money that is going into providing the facilities - the possibilities - for public transport to be better enhanced, both in terms of the supply and reliability. Reliability is really the key issue here. Ultimately, we need many more buses.

One of the positive areas in all of this is Local Link, which has received a significant injection of funding. Its success can be seen in the numbers. There has been a threefold to fourfold increase in utilisation of the service because the service is in the right place at the right time, cost-effective and reliable.

We now need to look at urban spaces and the people travelling 30 km, 40 km, 50 km or more, every day into the city and spend two hours in congestion or three hours in traffic jams. We must find short-term solutions. We cannot wait for some magical solution that is ten, 15 or 20 years down the road. We are currently putting forward a position on this which we will send to the Government shortly. We examined looking at what other countries have done.

To take Dublin as an example – I know Dublin better perhaps – we have the M50, which is a C-circle with approximately ten entry points. That is where the congestion comes from. We need to move outside the M50 and provide an opportunity for people there. Basically, it is as simple as a park-and-ride facility where people can come, park their car and get into a structured facility that will get them into the city. They can then move from where they are and get back out again. This is something that can be done in the short term, and we need short-term solutions because we cannot wait for long-term ones. We are pushing very hard that one or two of our solutions will be implemented this year, even before the summer. Let us try them out to see whether they work. If they do, let us roll them out more widely across the country.

I agree with Ms Donnelly. I would like to see the Local Link expanded more across the country.

Planning is another thing that holds up projects like the Navan rail line. Meath is the county with the highest number of people who leave the county to go to work in another county. They travel by bus but if the bus is not reliable, they drive. A train would bring them right into the city centre.

Taking that example of the N3 is good because, ultimately, the buses end up in the same traffic jam as the cars. Adding more cars is not going to help us in that regard. The Deputy is right; we have to look at other solutions like the rail link.

The fact the buses are full is a sign of success. We just need more of them. We are moving in the right direction, but not fast enough. We are pushing that the investment – the Government is investing a lot – goes into the right areas, namely, public transport, in order to ensure people can get around all of Ireland more efficiently.

I have a few questions. From reading the opening statement over the weekend, it seems to indicate that we have not made a lot of progress. Yet, the carbon tax is at €71 per tonne of CO2, and we are heading for €100 by 2030. I am not sure whether we will make it. I acknowledge that we are making a lot of progress. Do the witnesses agree that we have made considerable progress?

I am not a politician so I can be blunt about it. If I said we are making progress, everyone would say that we could sit back and relax. Part of the job of the council is to say we are not doing enough and we need to do more. Having said that, to be fair, Ireland has taken a number of effective measures. The carbon tax is one such measure. When we do a comparison with other countries in Europe, we stand out in that context. We are very well-placed there and it is something we should be very proud of.

We have also taken initiatives in other areas, such as using our natural resources to produce decarbonised electricity, namely, wind and solar. We are among the top-ranking EU member states in terms of the share of electricity that comes from sustainable electricity. Our targets are ambitious, and we might achieve them. To achieve them, we will definitely be to the forefront.

There are areas where we have made excellent progress. It is also fair to say that our retrofit programme, funded largely from the carbon tax, is one of the forefront programmes in Europe. We have seen how it has developed and how the system has built a capacity within the market to achieve the retrofit of houses. The one-stop shop, for example, is becoming efficient in the delivery of the systems and the grants are making a difference for people. We have made some achievements but there are areas where, quite honestly, we need to make better improvements. Transport and excise duty are two key areas in that regard.

Ms Donnelly is right. I will take up the point she made about the household grants for retrofitting. Earlier, I attended a presentation in the audiovisual room by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI. It is striking how generous the grants are. They have increased this year. Between €500 million and €600 million came through in the budget for them. It is extraordinary. They are also not means-tested. With a lot of grants, people think they will not qualify, but these grants are open to absolutely everyone. I am struck by how generous they are. The challenge is making the process simple for people. People worry about who will guide them through the process because they are not experts in this area. That knowledge is needed, such as the idea of a one-stop shop. The practice of that will tell how successful we are going to be.

The tax subsidy, as it is described, on home heating oil is at 13.5%. The witnesses probably describe that as a subsidy but people contact me detailing how their neighbour’s house has electricity rather than home heating oil and they only pay 9% VAT. They pay less than them, despite the individual in question having no option other than oil. They do not have access to gas, heat pumps, etc. I am just introducing some balance to the discussion because people are stuck with that. That individual would not describe the 13.5% VAT rate as a subsidy. Rather, they would question why the VAT is not the same. They are only trying to heat their home at the end of the day.

The kindest and most effective measure we can take for people in that situation is to support them to get out of the 13.5% VAT rate and into the 9% VAT rate for electricity, which means installing a heat pump. One of the areas the council has looked at repeatedly is what this means for someone, say, in a rural constituency as opposed to someone on a gas pipeline. What is the cost difference of moving from oil central heating to a heat pump system? There will be a capital cost in many of the rural houses but the average saving is between €500 and €800 per year in heating bills. That is significant and makes a difference.

I had this conversation only two hours ago with the SEAI briefly after the meeting. There are now generous grants for air-to-air or air-to-water heating systems. People do not have to dig up their floor. Existing radiators can be used or maybe the radiators need to be changed. While every case is different, when I asked whether people’s heating bills would be reduced, the representative from SEAI could not guarantee that. Maybe in certain cases, it would. Certainly, the efficiency of producing heat is cheaper with a heat pump but I still remain to be convinced – I am no expert – that it will actually save money. Someone will go through the transition of getting a heat pump and replacing the oil boiler but their heating costs could still be the same.

We do have some research on this and perhaps we can send it in.

I would certainly be interested in it.

I have extensive briefing documentation and I know the numbers are in here somewhere. Perhaps we can extract them and send them on. It is stylised information with, for example, a three-bedroom semi-detached house and a four-bedroom detached house, to illustrate what the price difference would be for the heating costs post the introduction of a heat pump. We will send it on.

Part of the challenge is that not many people know they can get a grant to cover almost the full cost of the heat pump. Again, it is very positive. At the end of her opening statement Ms Donnelly spoke about transport and how we should tax carbon with regard to transport, which we are doing and it yields €5 million. She stated we would have a reduced tax income as the carbon is reduced, and that we have to be aware that our tax base would be diluted. Surely there is a contradiction in this. At this point in time we should not be talking about possibly taxing transport when it becomes decarbonised. Surely the whole object is to tax carbon and give an incentive to get out of carbon. People might think then that we will tax electric cars in a couple of years' time. It is a bit premature to talk about non-carbon modes of transport this stage. The whole thought process should be about, and is about, taxing carbon, and God knows that gets enough publicity.

It is absolutely true. If there is no carbon we should not be taxing it and that is for sure. We have already seen the share of tax take due to transport fall quite significantly. It was near enough to 10% at one point, which was quite unusual in Europe. It is now around half that. That share has already fallen and the tax burden has shifted away from transportation now.

Carbon is only one of the externalities. The negative effects from transport congestion and the road damage costs are others. There are a number of them and we are not pricing any of them, including the carbon, correctly. This is why we are saying in our recommendations that we should look at how we should tax transport better. There is no answer yet on how we would do it better but we certainly can do it better. There are some issues. We need to incentivise people to do the right thing. When people are going electric or using public transport we should not make it hard for them, we should make it easy for them.

I have a small point on transport incentives. We are trying to get people onto public transport. People like to be independent and drive their cars, especially in bad weather and especially elderly people. There are many reasons people will not use public transport. A very simple issue is tap and go. People have to have the exact change to get the bus. People do not get change from a fiver. I remember being told by CIÉ when I was a county councillor a couple of years ago that in early 2026 this would be in place for Dublin Bus. I heard media reports three weeks ago that it will be in spring 2028 when it starts. I find it extraordinary that we have taken so long for a very simple measure.

The Leas-Chathaoirleach is totally right. It is extraordinary. Even integrated ticketing was available 100 years ago in places with paper tickets and we are still not able to do such a thing. It is remarkable. There are definite issues with making public transport convenient for people, which we need to tackle to make it attractive for them.

It puts a lot of people off. It is also an issue for tourists. It very much makes their experience much more difficult and it is a turn-off. I do not have a Leap card and it is a disincentive to get the bus.

The Leas-Chathaoirleach is quite right to point out the issue with flexibility, ease of ticketing and connecting. We have had a historical situation where sometimes Departments and-or agencies are very efficient in their own space but less so in collaboration with others. Joined-up thinking and joined-up action are key in looking to the future.

Something that always strikes me as a bit strange, questionable and unknown is the €3 billion to €26 billion window. As someone who likes to budget exactly and see where things are, it seems a very wide window. There are no dates opposite it. In the end, who knows, there may be political agreements but is there any sense or indication of when this figure will become harder? Is it based on 2030? Is it based on 2039? Is it a sliding scale over time? Is it a cliff edge? Is there any more information on this? I am always struck by how vague the figure is. It sounds very big. It is nearly equal to the rainy day fund as it will reach €24 billion this year. I would not like to see the rainy day fund being wiped out with a carbon fine.

In terms of the timing, we will start to get a clearer sense of where this is going mid next year, which is when we will have the first five years resolved in terms of finalised inventories. The quantitative element will then be pinned down for the first five years. Similarly, about five years later than that, which brings us up to in or around April to June 2032, we will have the full quantitative pieces settled. We will know exactly and all the sums will have been done in terms of what the inventory is. We will get the first sense of it next year. Part of the reason it is split in two is because the LULUCF aspect, which is the land use change aspect, is actually quite different between the first five-year period and the second five-year period.

To talk about the range of values a little bit, it looks at both sets of EPA projections. In simplistic terms, these are the more pessimistic and optimistic projections. It also looks at the range of possible values we might have to pay per unit of either energy on one side or emissions on the other. There is not a fixed market or fixed price for these units. We have unknowns on the quantity side and unknowns on the price side and, all of a sudden, we end up with quite a wide range. One of the things we could do would be to narrow it down to the parts we think are the most likely. Then, all of a sudden, the range would start to collapse in. It would not collapse into €1 by any stretch of the imagination but it would certainly start to fall. We might take a view on the outlook for emissions on energy, for example.

The Government should try to get a harder figure and better probability on what way it is going to go. When it is such a wide window it is hard to take seriously.

Some parts of it are already in the bank, so to speak, in the sense we have already not been able to take money that would otherwise have been ours. We can quantify this. This is how many units of carbon in the emissions trading system, ETS, flexibility we used, multiplied by the average price the year they would have been sold at if they had been sold. We can quantify this part.

That has happened.

Yes.

How is it converted into a fine? There has not been a fine.

It is not a fine as such. It is moneys the Government would have got but did not get because it used the flexibility. We can quantify this.

Why would it have got the money? Would it have been for reaching targets?

The idea of the ETS flexibility-----

Is there a climate fund?

The idea of the ETS flexibility is that one of the ways in which member states can demonstrate compliance with their effort-sharing regulation obligations is they are allowed to say that they will step back from a certain amount of the pot of ETS auction units that would belong to them under normal circumstances and request that those units not be auctioned. In Ireland's case this is 1.9 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent per annum. It is the same for each year of the ten years. We can look to see what was the average price of the auctions for the ETS units in any given year and then we can put a number on it. We can put a specific number on this part.

Roughly speaking, it is about €100 million a year in the five years so far. That part is easy enough to nail down. The other parts are more difficult because the other flexibilities we could use, for example, are buying units from other member states. We have not actually done that yet, so we do not know how much that costs until the Government goes and asks partner country X, Y or Z how much it will sell its surplus units for.

We had targets for 2020, for example. In order to achieve the 2020 target, we had to buy credits from other member states and it cost us €150 million. Credits in those days were quite cheap. Credits are getting more expensive all of the time. What Mr. Hussey described was that at the start of each cycle, we are given a basket of allowances. We can either say that we will give it to our own industry to use or we can sell it to Germany or France or whoever. We had a basket of allowances at the start of 2020 for five years. We did not sell it. We could have sold it to Germany or France or Spain or wherever. We said that we would not sell it and would use it ourselves instead, so our industry was able to use it. Instead of selling it, which would have gained us €500 million, we allowed our industry to absorb those allowances. We have effectively already not been able to sell €500 million of allowances.

That is a cost.

Call it a loss or a utilisation as the case may be.

It is money that did not come in that could have come in to us. Those auctions are open to any buyer. An electricity plant anywhere in the EU could be buying our units.

If we talk to the airlines about the aviation tax, they will tell us that if we tax them, it will cost more money to fly. Do any other countries in Europe charge aviation tax? These seem like some of the taxes that could be looked at. The witnesses talked about equalising the taxes between petrol and diesel. We are talking about a lot of lorries that are doing a couple of miles to the gallon and that is needed. These services are needed, whether it is construction or freight or whatever. Equalising would put an awful burden on them. I would like to see the witnesses' figures on the aviation tax compared with other countries.

On electric vehicles, where I live in rural Meath there are no electric charging points in the three or four small villages around me. We have a lot of work to do on the cost of electric vehicles, their range and the infrastructure for charging points around the country to get diesel and petrol cars off the road.

On the aviation tax, the situation is complicated because aviation is an international activity. At the moment, jet fuel taxation is subject to an international agreement on the basis that if, for example, we imposed it here in Ireland, that would put Irish airlines at a huge disadvantage to others because we cannot impose it on them. At the moment, there is the carbon offsetting and reduction scheme for international aviation, CORSIA, agreement that is under discussion with regard to a universal application of a taxation for international aviation fuel. I think some of the elements will start to kick in next year and Ireland, like, indeed, other European countries and other countries, will be subject to that as a taxation. What some countries in Europe have done, such as the Netherlands, is introduce a taxation on the ticket per passenger. It is not on the fuel, but it is actually on the passenger because they can do that nationally without distorting the international arrangements for aviation. Here in Ireland, we have not done that.

On the charging points, the Deputy is right, but I would say that, in fairness, there are two limitations on the charging points. One is that in certain parts of the country, the electricity grid is not strong enough to support centralised charging points. This is one of the reasons why the members will have seen recent reports about a huge injection of funding to both EirGrid and ESB Networks to reinforce the grid because there are situations where a charging point cannot go in because the grid is not strong enough to take it. It is a fundamental issue that we have to get right, and it is essential that we do.

The second point is that at the moment the priority is to put the charging points on the main routes, such as the motorways between the cities and the large towns. It is true that, as a consequence, smaller locations do not have them. There is funding available to local authorities to specifically put charging points in the streets of smaller towns. It might only be one or two. That is being rolled out, but it is being rolled out rather slowly. It could be much faster.

Data centres are a serious draw on our electricity. What is the council's take on that?

We have a formal position as a council on that. Our view is that if a data centre is to be established, it should have funded and energised 100% sustainable electricity before it starts its operation. The most recent decision from the CRU is that the figure is 80%, not 100%. Our view is that it should be funded in its entirety, but instead the decision seems to have gone to 80%.

May I go back one step to the issue of EVs in rural Ireland? I actually live in rural Ireland, literally 10 km from anywhere. Most people in rural Ireland could actually have their own charger, which is what I have. A charger is not a problem. I have not used a public charger in months. I have not needed to because the range issue is not one I have. My car comfortably does 400 km on a charge. Those issues are much less important in rural Ireland than in urban areas. If you have an apartment, you will not have your own charger or an ability to have that. In urban areas this is a much bigger issue and the cost of the electricity at public chargers is an issue there too. It is much cheaper on a home charger than it is on a public charger, so that changes the economics of having an EV. I do not think the range is an issue anymore with the kinds of cars there are now. The price of EVs is also now less of an issue because there are a lot of new models at the lower end of the price range. Again, the council has proposed that we would only subsidise those EVs at the lower end to enable poorer households to make that transition. We are now also seeing those EVs getting into the second-hand market, which is starting to help. It is not perfect yet, but we are moving in the right direction.

That concludes this session. I thank the witnesses for attending the meeting. The committee now stands adjourned until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 3 March.