*Corofin village.
OBSTACLES delaying the installation of electric vehicle charging points “in the middle of a climate crisis” has been slammed by councillors in North Clare.
Elected members of the West Clare Municipal District said “you’d lose the will to live” with the continued delays and absence of drive to deliver the infrastructure in the county.
In a proposal before the West Clare MD, Cllr Joe Killeen (FF) called on Clare County Council “to facilitate the provision of two charging points at Fair Lane Carpark in Corofin Village and a further charging station at Clos Innine Bui in Kilnaboy”.
Acting senior executive engineer in the transportation section of Clare County Council, Michael McNamara said the local authority was “engaged with ZEVI (Zero Emissions Vehicles Ireland) in the Delivery of the Regional & Local Charging Network Plan, which at present is based at strategy development”.
Clare forms part of Region 7 in this plan alongside Galway, Mayo, Sligo and Donegal with Donegal the lead authority.
McNamara admitted, “The delivery shall be formed over 6 stages with the project currently at Stage 1 – Strategy Development, with consultants Systera appointed for the region for the development of the strategy earlier this year. It is hoped that the draft strategy shall be published for public consultation in early 2026”.
Once the strategy has been delivered, the network plan then progresses to infrastructure planning, business model and partnering approach, procurement, implementation and operations.
He said the Council “is committed to ensuring the delivery of an evidence based Charging Network that shall ensure the appropriate charger is provided at the appropriate location for the appropriate purpose”.
Corofin’s sustainable energy community were eager to install the charging points, Cllr Killeen explained. Within the North Clare village it was felt that a Council owned site would be the best option, efforts had been made to use Páirc Finne, the home of Corofin GAA “but the gates are locked at night and it wasn’t deemed suitable”.
After reading the response from McNamara, Cllr Killeen commented, “I didn’t have my glasses on and I thought it was at stage six of seven but then I put my glasses on and realised we are still actually on stage one. I’ll say no more, we don’t know what will happen, we will wait and see, if charging points are in Council owned property it is probably the way to go”.
There was no need to power up the frustrations felt by elected members. Cllr Joe Garrihy (FG) stated, “My God you’d lose the will to life, it’s just as well we’re a small country, in the name of all that is holy, we’re in the middle of a climate crisis how could someone come up with a process like this, we’ve been doing energy masterplans in communities across North Clare and we can’t even put a charging point in Corofin”. The lack of urgency was astounding, “you would lose the will to live reading this”.
Deliberate attempts to stall the delivery are at play, Cllr Shane Talty (FF) believed. “We’re a marvellous country for acronyms, ZEVI, this is a bureaucratic quagmire designed to wait out the situation and hope the private sector delivers, we’ve talked about this since I was first elected in 2019”. He added, “To retain the will to persist is difficult”.
Kilrush’s first charging point only arrived last year, Cllr Ian Lynch (IND) told the meeting. “We generated the evidence and the need for it, we had no influence in the Council and there was no representation made by the Council for us. If the community is interested, they should contact ESB directly. I hate X but I found it a very good option and used it to contact ESB about this”.
Lahinch’s car park has shared ownership, Cllr Bill Slattery (FG) advised which has led to the installation of six charging points with Lahinch Golf Club providing four and a further two more in situ on the Miltown Malbay road car park.
Without fast chargers, electric vehicles can “take half a day to charge,” Cllr Michael Shannon (FF) flagged. “It is like plugging them in at home, we’ll have 500,000 people in West Clare for two weeks next year and we’ve no charging facilities, it is third world stuff”.
Inaction from Government presents an opportunity for community groups, Cllr Rita McInerney (FF) maintained. “We did have a look at this in Doonbeg, it goes back to communities, where there is an opportunity for revenue for community groups and responsibilities to address the issue by having their own product, that is what we should be looking at now”.
She said the Kilkee charging points were out of action for three weeks which led to electric vehicle owners who reside in apartments in the area forced to drive to Kilrush to charge their car. “We can’t rely on ESB to provide it because the service isn’t there on reaction time to fix them when they go out of action”.
