Ireland launches sports club charging scheme
Ireland’s Department of Transport has launched the ‘Shared Island Sports Club EV Charging Scheme’. The new €15 million scheme is designed to support the roll-out of publicly accessible, fast-charging for sports clubs and communities across the island of Ireland.
This is the first destination scheme launched as part of the Irish government’s EV Charging Infrastructure Strategy and will be followed by destination schemes for commercial and public sector locations, as well as by a neighbourhood charging scheme which will support local authorities to provide charging for areas where home charging is not possible.
The reason that the charging infrastructure rollout began with sports clubs, is that they purportedly serve a wide swath of the population, while other programmes will be focused in their application, as Minister Eamon Ryan explains: “So many of us are frequent visitors to our local sports clubs, whether that’s dropping off our children for training or games, helping out or playing sports ourselves,” he said, adding: “It makes perfect sense then that we are starting our destination EV charging plans by providing these grants for sports clubs.”
In terms of actually allocating the money to projects, a partnership was developed with and administered by Pobal, an Irish community outreach service provider, who works “on behalf of Government, and in conjunction with communities and local agencies, to support social inclusion and local and community development”, according to the company’s own statements.
Pobal CEO Anna Shakespeare said the following regarding Pobal’s commitment to the new scheme: “Pobal is delighted to work with the Department of Transport and Zero Emission Vehicles Ireland (ZEVI) on this exciting and ambitious new scheme. The Shared Island Sports Club EV Charging Scheme is very timely and important initiative to support the rollout of electric vehicle charging points at sport club facilities across the island. In light of Ireland’s targets under the Climate Action Plan 2023 and commitment to the Shared Island Initiative, we in Pobal recognise the value of accessible services to communities and are proud to support it.”
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