Timeline for new electric car chargers sought at monthly council meeting

Green Party councillor Marianne Butler sought an update on the FASTER border project at July’s monthly meeting of Louth County Council.

The project seeks to install 73 electric charger points across the border region by 2023.

“This project has been a long time in the making, we first applied for funding back in the summer of 2019 and it was officially launched last August so I suppose it’s in danger of being called the ‘slower’ project if it takes any long.”

“So how long for these really important chargers to be placed all along those border counties?”

Fine Gael councillor John Reilly further queried the proposed locations of the Louth chargers.

In response Director of services Catherine Duff said she felt that the project was making good progress since the council stepped in and took the project over from state agencies.

Councillor Eileen Tully remarked that it was “imperative” that the chargers were installed as soon as possible as there simply were not enough in the country and lack of provision would lead to “people going off buying electric cars.”

Chief Executive Joan Martin commented that the provision of chargers was not the responsibility of the local authority and that the FASTER project along with another for on street charge points within towns came about as a result of the Council applying for specific funding from the government “but generally it is not our responsibility, what we’ve done in the county development plan is put a framework around it.”

She did say that the provision of chargers was taken into consideration when reviewing the planning applications for new housing estates but the council saw its role as one of “policy and facilitation rather than actual provision, which I think the private sector will take up eventually.”