The grant needs to go!

Ignorance. Got a taxi home the other day. He spent 30k on an Octavia (that didnt sound terribly healthy) and said there was no incentive to biy an EV. didnt want to suggest he may be wrong.

Back to the grants:

Grants as typically executed in Ireland are useless and mostly an impediment to achieving the objective. Which is to change the human behavior by stimulating demand through a reduction of the commodity' price. The reduction doesn't seem to occur because the grant is consumed by the seller and/or some middleman. The demand is not stimulated and the behavior isn't changed either. It's a grant but a failure.

The best and cheapest subsidy is almost always a tax exemption, a tax credit or a waiver of a charge.

In the case of EVs, where we (the state/people collectively) want to change the human behavior to reduce emissions/pollution, meet existing international commitments and make transport more sustainable, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. Just follow the Norwegian policies which have been tested and executed successfully.

Waive motor tax, waive/reduce VAT, waive/reduce VRT for EVs. Increase/adjust the same for ICE.

I could imagine a tax credit, but that's more difficult to administer. Tax exemptions at source is the best.

Note: AFAIK 0 VAT is illegal under the EU treaties but a) Norway is doing it whilst in the EEA and b) Ireland is doing it for disabled drivers, so I'm pretty sure there's a way e.g. via an exemption which is a tax return, tax grant by the government so technically not 0% VAT.

Pretty sure the Gov could do the exact same thing for EVs today...

Is there a warehouse full of lonely EVs pleading with the reluctant Irish public to buy? Are you proposing to retain the €5k grant as well as all these proposed tax exemptions?

Seems to me that when there are a queue of people who would bite your hand off to buy a €60k EV, boosting demand isnt really the problem you have to solve.

The problem in Irish Governance is very apparently - a lack of strategy and a lack of balls 😀.

Usually lot of talking but scant of actions.

Therer's no clear objective, or the objective is only a "talking point" with no strategy/action plan how to achieve it in reality, so the result is that it's clownish and everyone knows it's totally not feasible. You know, like the objective of 1M EVs by 2030 🤣... 5% of the target and only 7 years to go, everyone knows it's a delusion at this stage given that there are basically no incentives, no investment plans, no punitive taxes to deter from ICE or any sort of actions taken towards the goal. But they still keep peddling it. It's embarassing and insulting to people with above average IQ.

Every Gov policy here is wishy-washy and no Irish politician has balls to tackle any sort of lobby on top (beef/agri, property/developers, carmakers, insurance cartels, you name it...)

Ah well the one thing the Irish politician is good at is getting reelected and good luck to those who attempt to triple motor tax or introduce even more punitive taxes on the majority still driving ices. who are already experiencing a cost of living crisis so that a small number of predominantly better off car owners can be subsidised to drive around in expensive EVs. It's not as if EV are not currently pretty generously subsidised with a €5k grant for cars up to €60k and no VRT up to €40k. In the current climate introducing significantly increased tax reliefs for better off people to buy new EVs might not go down so well for the majority of people who will not benefit from them.