MORGAN HITS OUT AT ‘APPALLING INADEQUACY’ OF ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING POINTS IN THE AREA
Local election candidate Oliver Morgan has praised Cllr Maeve Yore for raising what he describes as the “appalling inadequacy” of the ESB in its operation of electric vehicle charging points in the area.
The issue of broken charging points was raised recently by Cllr Yore, who discovered that the ESB have just two engineers to service the charge stations nationally. She claimed that there were broken charge points in Blackrock and on the St Alphonsus Road in Dundalk.
In a letter to Talk of the Town today, former Dundalk Town Councillor Morgan, who is running as an independent candidate in May’s Local Elections, said he had also received complaints about the charging points.
Oliver Morgan
He said: “I must compliment Cllr Maeve Yore on becoming the first elected public representative, national or local, to highlight the appalling inadequacy of the ESB in its operation of our national electric vehicle re-charging network.
“I, myself, have received several complaints and made representations to the relevant Government Departments, in the past, about the joke which is our local re-charging network with these hyper-expensive re-charging units being “out of order”, both locally e.g Blackrock, Dundalk, Carlingford and nationally for months at a time.
“The re-charging unit at County Hall has been “out of order” for almost 3 months; the unit at the Long Walk was “out of order” for over 6 months in 2017; the unit at Dundalk’s Clarke Railway Station is more often “out of order” than operational; one side of the unit in Carlingford Village has been “out of order” for almost a year and the litany of failure goes on and on.
“The Government intends that the function of ESB e-cars is to hasten the transition of our circa two million vehicle national fleet from dirty, poisonous, polluting hydro-carbon fuel to clean, “green” electricity fuelled transportation as quickly as possible.
“Apparently ESB was grant-aided some €37,000,000 to establish a network of charging points nationwide in order to facilitate propelling this conversion.
“Regrettably, this €37,000,000 which, sensibly used, would have paid for the creation and subsequent maintenance of a network of over 6,000 charging points was, largely, squandered on an array of completely unnecessary charging units, at a cost of scores of thousands of euro each, which have served no useful purpose other than to transfer electric into car batteries, which function would have been much better achieved by simple industrial-standard electrical sockets.
“It would be much better achieved because a simple electrical socket with no complex circuitry or electronics to continually fail and go “out of order” would give 99% reliability of service.
“The existing 1,200 charging units are now obsolete scrap and the ESB is proposing to spend another €37,000,000 of our scarce resources replacing them with equally unnecessary charging units.
“As it is, drivers seeking re-charging have little more than a 50/50 chance of finding a charging point which works when and where they need it!
“If the people in the ESB were trying to kill the electric car all over again, while purporting to promote its uptake, they could not do a better (con) job!!”
Source: talkofthetown.ie
