Tipperary councillor criticises three month delay in activating new Clonmel EV charging points

A councillor declared it wasn’t “good enough” that it took three months to activate two new Electrical Vehicle (EV) fast charging points at a Clonmel car park.

Cllr Siobhán Ambrose informed Tipperary County Council’s December meeting that thankfully the two EV charging stations installed at the council’s Davis Road car park next to the former Kickham Army Barracks were activated at the end of November.

They were installed in August and it was “really not good enough” that it took so long to get them up operational, she said.

The Fianna Fáil councillor asked the council to engage with the private company that provides the EV charging points to ensure such a delay doesn’t happen again.

She also asked the council if there was any funding available to upgrade slow charging EV charging stations in her home town to fast charging stations.

Council Roads Section Senior Engineer Liam Brett responded that there wasn’t any national funding available to upgrade slow charging EV charging stations to fast ones.

He pointed out that some electric vehicle owners like to charge their vehicles at slow charging stations as they were happy to leave them charging for a pro-longed period.

But Mr Brett acknowledged these charging points were much slower than the fast charging stations.

He also updated the council, at Cllr Ambrose's request, on the progress of the project by Easy Go in partnership with eir and Tipperary County Council to install fast EV charging stations at a total of 13 locations across the county.

He said about two thirds of the new stations were now operational and work on installing the charging points was ongoing.

Apart from Clonmel, the fast EV charging stations are being installed in the south of the county in Cahir, Carrick-on-Suir, Cashel, Clonmel, Fethard and Tipperary Town.