As per our AGM, held on Sunday the 23rd of April 2023, we have a new committee makeup to announce! We have some coming and going, people rotating roles within the existing committee member base, as well as some new committee members!

To repeat the information that Kevin shared last year, we elect a committee of 11 members at each AGM. 4 of our members are official directors of our non-profit as a CLG, and 7 of the members have a portfolio of some sort. 1 committee space can be occupied by a ceremonial president role, but we still have not utilised that role to date. Maybe it will come, but for now we drive-on.

Before introducing the new committee, I want to extend and acknowledge the following two committee members who have finished up with us this year in an official capacity:

• Paul Kelly, who has been our IT extraordinaire for, well forever I think! Through his work we have the means to communicate all our work through Paul’s help and foresight via Blacknight web-hosting. And in the past few months we have transitioned to the latest platform. You should all see a massive improvement in our page response since this. So a massive thank you to Paul and all he has done!
• Peter Bracken, who has been our PR representative for the past two years has stepped back, as well he is busy. Running two PR roles is tough work, so with PeterTrys gaining in significance and time, Peter has stepped back to focus on his work there. We are wishing Peter all the best in his role there, and hopefully we will meet in a Sports Club somewhere for a top-up and a chat!

A massive thank you to both for their past work, and to wish them all the best in their future endeavours!

Turning now towards the future, we look to the Committee members for 2023, and a number of changes were voted in and you will see them being implemented in the next few weeks!

Firstly you will see a change of name for the association to come. One of our motions at the AGM was to remove the word “owners” from our name. While we will continue to represent our members & owners, the change of name allows us to get involved in conversations and to act as an authority in a larger capacity, versus just representing EV owners. With that you will see the Irish EV Owners Association (IEVOA) change to the Irish EV Association (IEVA) over the coming weeks.

Secondly to this, at our AGM in 2022, we formed the organization as a non-profit CLG. This was to allow us to step into our next phase which we are starting now. That is to start to take on paid employees as an organization. Why? We are all volunteers currently, and we have been listening to our members and their views, and to work towards a Just Transition and one where we can achieve our goals as a committee, we need full time employees to do this. Starting this year, Eamon Stack will step into the Executive Chair role to start the formation of this business. This is on a contract basis for 1-year, and will involved 1 days work per week throughout the year to get the structures in place to bring in more employees. I noted in my update as Membership Officer that this past year has been one of growth. And with that we need to keep up and make sure we can provide the best for our members.

And with that, I would like to introduce our Committee for the coming year which looks as follows:

For now as we kick off we have a number of roles changes we need to resolve as a Committee. With myself moving from the Membership role to Chair, this role will need to be picked up as it is a vital role within the Committee. We are in the process of deciding on how we will handle the PR Officer for the future as this is an important role, and a small sub-team makes more sense here to make sure we can spread our message via all possible channels. And finally with Eamon taking on the Executive Chair role and driving IEVA into the future, we will need to assign a new Treasurer to maintain our finances and to keep everything in order. And if that wasn’t enough, with the name change, we will be working on a new logo and website! So we are kicking off the year with a bang and a committed focus on the future.

Finally, I want to extend a congratulations to all those returning this year to the committee. And a warm welcome to our newly elected members. We are in for an extremely interesting year to come, one with lots of changes. Aim high, and keep moving!

Matthew Sealy, 2023 Chairperson