Ireland lags behind EU average for electric car charging infrastructure

Is that good?

It’s actually pretty meh. According to the CSO’s numbers, that means Ireland ranks about mid-table when it comes to the proportion of electric cars on the road to the chargers you need to, well, charge them.

What’s the actual proportion?

There are currently (well, it may be slightly different now — the CSO’s compiled figures are correct to the end of 2025) 30 electric vehicles for each charging point, and 54 electric vehicles for each fast charging point, although there’s some troubling nuance in that last number. The CSO regards an AC charger of 22kW or above, and DC chargers of 50kW or above as ‘fast’ and to be honest with ever-growing battery capacities and charging speeds, those numbers barely qualify as ‘fast’ in real-world conditions anymore. 

Hmmm. So we’re not doing great.

Well, hang on. Actually, we do quite well in one statistic. Across the 27 EU member states, the CSO’s study found that 19 per cent of all charging points are fast chargers, whereas in Ireland 55 per cent of ours are fast. Of course, that’s not all good — it means, therefore, that we also have a lower proportion of slower ‘destination’ chargers and chargers in car parks and city centres (which will increase in importance as the ranges of our electric vehicles rise), and of course fast chargers are the most expensive way to charge, with the ESB having just hiked its standard fees for all of its charging points. Oddly, given the proportion of fast chargers in Ireland, 82 per cent of all of our chargers are located in urban areas. 

How are other countries doing?

The best performers in the EU for charging infrastructure are the Netherlands, with just three electric vehicles per charging point (slow and fast chargers combined), while Latvia leads the way on vehicles per charger, with nine electric vehicles per fast charger. The EU average is seven electric vehicles per charger overall, and 37 per fast charger. So, as you can see, Ireland is lagging very badly when it comes to infrastructure. We wish we could say we’re surprised… Thankfully we’re not the worst. Malta has 91 electric vehicles per charger, and a massive 2,595 electric vehicles per fast charger. 

How well spread are Ireland’s chargers?

The CSO said Co. Dublin and Co. Cork together accounted for 30 per cent (332) of the national charging locations, 34 per cent (1,152) of the total charging points, and 34 per cent (636) of the total fast charging points. In contrast, Co. Leitrim had the lowest share of charging locations at 0.4 per cent, with five locations, 0.3 per cent of charging points (11 charging points), and 0.4 per cent of fast charging points with seven.