No records kept of meeting between Government adviser and Tesla executives

No minutes of a meeting between one of Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan’s eight special advisers and representatives of electric car maker Tesla Motors Ireland last October have been retained, the Department of the Environment has confirmed.

The meeting over coffee between the Minister’s adviser Paul Kenny, Natasha Mahmoudian, Tesla’s head of public policy for Ireland and the UK, and Tesla’s UK market leader Tim Findlay, took place on October 13th last year, the day after Budget 2022 was announced.

While a note of the meeting was filed with the Register of Lobbying, no detailed records of what was discussed were retained.

According to the filing, the meeting was focused on three topics: the European Union’s (EU) Fit for 55 plan to reduce emissions by 55 per cent by 2030; the EU’s Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Directive and the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) in the Republic.

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Emails between FleishmanHillard, the PR firm that set up the meeting on behalf of Tesla Motors Ireland, and Mr Kenny were released under a Freedom of Information request. However, no records of the meeting itself exist, and neither was there any written record of the Minister having been kept abreast of what was discussed.

Mr Kenny was told that Ms Mahmoudian and Mr Findlay would “love the opportunity to meet” him to “provide some background to the company, outline the group’s Irish plans and discuss broader EU transportation developments”.

However, a spokesman for the Department of the Environment said the engagement did not include a discussion of Tesla Motors’ investment in Ireland, “other than the representatives referencing, in passing, the company’s EV infrastructure in the course of the meeting”.

The spokesman could not elaborate on the discussion beyond the lobbying register filing. However, he said records of the meeting would have been retained had Mr Kenny not expected a written follow-up from Tesla.

“The meeting was a short, informal meeting with Tesla Motors, in which the representatives confirmed that they would follow up in writing, but this was not received subsequently,” the spokesman said. “Meeting notes would have been retained if no superseding formal follow-up was anticipated. In this case, it was anticipated that there would be a formal follow-up in writing.”

Asked whether Mr Ryan was told about the meeting, the spokesman said: “The Minister was informed verbally, in the course of routine updates/discussions between a minister and an adviser.”

Ms Mahmoudian could not be reached for comment.

Tesla Motors Ireland, the Irish arm of the Elon Musk-headed EV maker, was incorporated in 2015. Employing 17 people at its Sandyford, Co Dublin showroom and sales outlet, the company posted after-tax profits of €461,901 in 2021, down slightly from €483,445 in 2020.

While the car company’s turnover increased from almost €40.2 million in 2020 to nearly €43.5 million last year, its costs also rose, jumping more than 9 per cent to €40.5 million as its manufacturing operations grappled with global supply chain issues.

Some 863 Tesla vehicles were registered in the State in 2021, according to figures from the Society of Irish Motor Industry (SIMI), up 10.6 per cent from 2020.

The Government is aiming to have 936,000 EVs — including passenger cars, buses and vans — on the State’s roads by 2030 and 1,000 on-street car-charging points installed by 2024.

However, there were just 47,000 EVs in the Republic’s fleet in 2021, according to figures released by the department earlier this year, almost half of which were hybrids. Separately, an Oireachtas report found recently that with just 33 EV charging points installed across the State since 2019, the Government is a long way off from hitting its targets and that meeting them will require substantial State-backed incentives.

The report by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office estimated that between 2010 and 2021, at least €322 million of exchequer support had already been provided for incentives, mostly in the form of VRT relief for hybrid cars.