Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 14 February 2023
65. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science the current position with regard to the electric vehicle, EV, centre of excellence at Columb Barracks, Mullingar. [6613/23]
View answerWill the Minister update the House on the position with regard to the location of the centre of excellence for electric vehicles in Columb Barracks, Mullingar?
I thank Deputy Troy for this question and for keeping in touch with me on the issue. I am very committed to making sure we deliver an EV centre of excellence at Columb Barracks, Mullingar. As the Deputy will be aware, I visited there previously. As recently as in the past two weeks, the chief executive of SOLAS visited there also and met the local education and training board, ETB, about this project and on a number of other issues.
As the Deputy will be aware, the Government is fully committed to achieving our ambitious targets set out in the climate action plan 2023. A key component of the plan is the importance of fleet electrification and a target has been set for 30% of our private car fleet to be comprised of electric vehicles by 2030. Zero Emission Vehicles Ireland, ZEVI, has been established as the dedicated office charged with supporting consumers, the public sector and businesses to continue to make the switch to zero emission vehicles.
It is important that projected workforce requirements are informed by the expertise of the relevant sectoral, departmental and industry experts, with my Department contributing based upon its responsibility to align future skills needs with current and emerging workforce plans developed by the sector. In this context, my Department is supporting this transition by ensuring that through the further education and training strategies, sustainable green skills are key components of our further education and training processes.
I understand very well that the Longford and Westmeath education and training board, LWETB, has submitted an application to develop the new centre and an electric vehicle maintenance centre of excellence in Columb Barracks. My Department has been advised by SOLAS that a new proposal specifically relating to the electric vehicle maintenance skills centre at Columb Barracks is now being prepared by LWETB. The proposal will be subject to full evaluation by SOLAS. This is something we will see happen. I believe that Mullingar will be home to a centre of excellence for electric vehicle training. It will be a key component to roll out retrofitting. It is one of the big pieces of work we have done in the last number of years and we now have enough centres in that space and EV training will be the next one. Columb Barracks is an ideal site and location. I am fully committed, as are my Department, SOLAS, and the LWETB, to making this happen.
I thank the Minister for the update. We all share the ambition of the Land Development Agency, LDA, for Columb Barracks in Mullingar for mixed use, that is, for educational, enterprise, community and housing purposes. A key part of that is a college of further education and centre of excellence for electric vehicle management.
I compliment the Longford Westmeath ETB on the work it has done thus far to bring the application to where it is. I also acknowledge SOLAS, the Minister and my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, for pushing this. We really want to see this developed in Mullingar. It is an ideal location.
We must acknowledge, however, that in the last weeks there has been a change in terms of the plans for Columb Barracks, Mullingar. A lease has been entered into with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. They are making space available, and rightly so, to help with the influx of refugees. In the context of timing, that lease is for 12 months, and does the Minister envisage that this will have an impact on the provision of a centre of excellence in Mullingar?
In previous replies, the Minister mentioned the importance of student accommodation going hand in hand with colleges. I believe there is an opportunity to retrofit the existing buildings now to help with the accommodation crisis for refugees, which we would be able to use into the future when this centre of excellence is created.
It is certainly an interesting proposal from Deputy Troy. I share his view that it is appropriate for any space to be handed over in an emergency humanitarian situation, such as these refugees fleeing from Ukraine and for people needing international protection.
I am conscious that it is a very large site. I am not a terribly technical person, but I do not see this as seriously disrupting the plans there. The plans are at an advanced stage but there is still a bit of work to do in order to get to the actual delivery point. We are all aware of that but we are all very committed to making it happen.
I join with the Deputy in praising the Longford Westmeath ETB and its chief executive, Ms Liz Lavery, with whom I had the chance to meet on a number of occasions. As the Deputy has said, the Columb Barracks site is currently owned by the Department of Defence. It is underused, with sections occupied by community groups, youth groups, and now as part of our emergency accommodation response. The entire Columb Barracks site is proposed for redevelopment by the LDA, with mixed use. I really believe that our sector can play a part as part of that overall master plan. I am very happy to keep the Deputy closely informed and to visit and meet him and the ETB on this in the coming months.
I thank the Minister. I welcome the Minister's renewed commitment, or it would be much fairer to say his continued commitment, to the development of an electric vehicle centre of excellence in Columb Barracks. I welcome that the Minister considers that it can proceed, despite what is happening in the barracks at the moment.
Could the Minister use his position of influence within the Government to ensure that instead of putting tents into the square in the middle, that we look at renovating the existing buildings? They are protected structures and they will have to be maintained. They will offer a very good complementary facility to any future educational institution there in terms of living space for students. In the meantime, they can be used to support this country's response to the refugee crisis. The buildings are in relatively good order, and they could be brought into a habitable state relatively easily and they would be complementary to the further development of the barracks in the future.
I will certainly feed that back to my colleague, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, and to the Cabinet committee on Ukraine and the major humanitarian crisis. I visited the Columb Barracks site. We were accompanied on the visit by a local historian who took us around the site, the history of which is fascinating. It is a massive site. Far be it from me to say, but I think the right approach is to try to have a mixed-use development where we can put what was a thriving beating heart of the community back into use in a modern way. Part of that would be for housing, part for education and part of it for the green revolution we need to see in terms of skills. I am very pleased that Longford-Westmeath ETB has put up its hands and offered to be leaders in this area. I am very grateful to SOLAS for taking such an active role. If we are serious about climate change and action, which we are, this EV piece is huge and the centre of excellence in Mullingar can be a hub for the entire country. I look forward to its development.
