AT 9AM ON Wednesday, 1 July, a lot of car dealers around the country were sitting at their desks, coffee in hand, refreshing a webpage.

By 9.40am it was all over for anyone chasing a grant from a rural area. By 10.15am, the urban money was gone too. In total, it took a little over an hour for €10 million to disappear.

That was the ICE2EV pilot scheme, and if you blinked, you missed it.

For those who did blink, a quick recap.

The scheme offered a €5,000 grant, on top of the existing €3,500 SEAI purchase grant, to anyone who scrapped a car more than 13 years old and replaced it with a new electric one.

It opened for applications through dealers at 9am, and the SEAI’s system, groaning under the weight of everyone trying to get in at once, promptly fell over for about 10 minutes.

When it came back, the money went fast. Two thousand EVs were funded in total.

That sinking feeling 

I’ll admit my first reaction, like a lot of people, was a sinking feeling that this looked like chaos. A website crashing on launch day is not exactly a vote of confidence.

But once the dust settled, and the numbers came in, it was hard not to be a bit........

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