The Hard Shoulder<\/a>, Minister O\u2019Brien said it was \u201creally clear\u201d that it was only a time limited pilot scheme.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI’m really pleased that it’s fully subscribed and it’s going to help 2000 households to change out of older cars into new EVs,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I said we would run a pilot scheme; we’d assess its success afterwards and look at where the sales were.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Regardless of whether or not there is a second scrappage scheme, Minister O\u2019Brien said the long-term trend favours EV over traditional petrol and diesel models.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve seen already for the first half of this year about an 85% increase in EVs registered versus this time last year,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we’re touching 250,000 electric vehicles on our roads now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think people are responding, yes, to the grant support to \u20ac3,500 that’s there and in place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve added more money to that to ensure that grant remains at \u20ac3,500 – which it will.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Minister O\u2019Brien said that\u00a0 the ICE2EV Pilot Scrappage Scheme had \u201cbeen very successful\u201d and hinted that a permanent scheme could soon be announced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ll have a look at it and then assess what we do next,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut look, the main thing is for people who are listening, there’s been a big discussion over the last few weeks about EVs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think from talking to people and from car dealers as well, there’s been a big increase in interest in EVs full stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, even people who weren’t accessing the top up grant scheme, more people buying those cars – and that’s a good thing for our climate and it’s a good thing for people’s pockets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Main image: Darragh O’Brien. Picture by: PA Archive\/PA Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Darragh O\u2019Brien has hinted there could soon be another scrappage scheme for people hoping to exchange older vehicles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-533384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}