Fianna Fáil's plans for electric cars could cause serious problems for M50 traffic

Fianna Fáil will include a range of incentives to motorists who intend on buying electric vehicles in their manifesto for the upcoming election. Fianna Fáil's transport spokesman, Timmy Dooley, has pledged that people driving electric cars will not have to pay road tax or any toll charges.

The current government are planning to have 250,000 cars powered by renewable energy by 2020, but so far it seems a while before such a substantial number of electric cars grace the road. While there have been over 120,000 diesel and petrol cars sold in 2015, just 457 electric cars have been sold.

"This is not the golden bullet for achieving carbon reductions but it certainly is a start. We need to be bold an imaginative and realise that we have an opportunity here to change the way people travel," Dooley told the Irish Independent.

"You have many drivers who are driving across the M50 every day but they are only driving from the northside to southside or vice versa. If tolls were reduced, it would go a long way to increasing the number of electric cars on the road," he said.

While it is well intentioned to reduce the amount of people paying tolls, something that everyone would be pleased with, the increase to the numbers of people using the M50 as a result would only cause further delays to an already overused motorway.