What the law does and doesn't require
There is no provision in Irish law that obliges an Owners' Management Company to install EV charging. The Multi-Unit Developments Act 2011 ("the MUD Act") is the legislation that governs how an OMC runs a development, covering annual service charges, sinking fund contributions, director terms, and a dispute resolution mechanism for owners, but it doesn't name EV charging as a service an OMC must provide. Government policy has been moving in that direction: the National EV Charging Infrastructure Strategy has flagged work to expand home charge point support to shared apartment parking, and the topic has come up directly in the Oireachtas. For now, though, the decision to install shared charging sits with the OMC and its members, not with a statutory mandate.
That matters practically. It means a resident asking "can I get a charger?" isn't raising a compliance issue the OMC must resolve by a deadline. It's a proposal that needs to go through the OMC's normal decision-making process, the same as any other capital works item.
⚖️ How this gets approved and funded
Under the MUD Act, expenditure of a non-recurring, capital nature (which a shared EV charging installation falls under) is typically funded from the sinking fund that every OMC is required to maintain, or through a specific members' resolution at an AGM or EGM if the sinking fund can't cover it alone. Directors bring a costed proposal to members, usually informed by whatever SEAI grant funding the development qualifies for, and the members vote on it in line with the Act's normal decision-making rules.
If a dispute arises, whether over the works going ahead, how cost is apportioned, or access rights for a shared bay, the MUD Act also provides a formal dispute resolution route through the Circuit Court. That route exists as a backstop, but it's rarely where these disagreements need to end up if access and billing are handled clearly from the start.
If you're one resident asking for a charger, not the OMC planning a rollout
Everything above is written for the board making a shared-infrastructure decision. But a lot of people landing on this page are a single resident who wants a charger fitted at their own space, not a director planning a development-wide rollout. That's a different, smaller question, and it deserves a direct answer.
You cannot install a charger in a shared car park without the OMC's written consent, even if the parking space is allocated to your unit and you're paying for the work yourself. The OMC owns or manages the common areas and the electrical infrastructure serving them, so the request has to go to the board (usually via the managing agent) before an electrician touches anything. If you're a renter rather than an owner, you need your landlord's written consent first, and the landlord then needs the OMC's consent on top of that; skipping either step is the most common reason an installation gets held up or refused after the fact.
Two practical routes exist for wiring a single space:
- Connect to your own apartment meter. Only realistic if your electricity meter is physically close to your parking space. Where it isn't, running a dedicated circuit that far usually isn't cost-effective, which is the reason most single-resident requests get complicated fast.
- Connect to the common area supply. Avoids the meter-distance problem, but the OMC then has to solve how your electricity use gets billed back to you specifically, which is exactly the metering and fairness problem a shared, professionally installed network is designed to avoid.
Boards are often cautious here for reasons worth understanding rather than dismissing: the building's existing electrical infrastructure may not have spare capacity for one-off chargers being added piecemeal, and once one resident gets an individual connection, the OMC is usually fielding the same request from several more, each with its own cabling and metering problem. That's a large part of why so many boards would rather run one grant-funded shared installation than approve individual connections case by case, and it's worth explaining that reasoning to a resident asking "why won't they just say yes."
If the OMC declines an individual request, the practical next step usually isn't a legal one. It's proposing the shared-installation route above instead, ideally with other EV-owning or EV-planning residents backing the request at the next AGM, since a costed proposal covering the whole development is far more likely to get a "yes" than a one-off request for a single bay. The MUD Act's Circuit Court dispute mechanism exists for genuine disputes over OMC decision-making, but it's a poor first move for what is, in most cases, a capacity and fairness problem rather than a legal one.
It's also common in older developments to find one or two individual chargers that were approved informally years ago, before any grant scheme or shared system existed. Those don't need to be removed or reworked if the OMC later runs a grant-funded shared installation; they simply carry on as a separate, individually wired connection alongside the new network, and can usually be added to De Energy Hub's booking and access layer the same way an existing shared charger can.
The SEAI Apartment Charging Grant: what it funds, and what it doesn't
The SEAI Apartment Charging Grant, part of the Zero Emission Vehicles Ireland (ZEVI) programme, is the main funding route for shared apartment charging. A few things are worth being precise about before a proposal goes anywhere near an AGM:
- Who applies: the OMC applies directly, along with Build-to-Rent management companies, Local Authorities, and Approved Housing Bodies. Private and commercial landlords owning units in a development can also apply, but only for a bulk installation covering multiple units, not individual residents applying on their own behalf.
- What it covers: the cabling, distribution infrastructure, metering, communications systems and installation cost of shared charging for the development, not just the charge points themselves.
- How much: the funding level depends on applicant type: 90% of eligible costs for a Local Authority or Approved Housing Body, 80% for an OMC, 60% for a Build-to-Rent management company. The overall award is capped at the lesser of €5,000 per dwelling or €100,000 per development, and each individual charge point is separately capped at the lesser of its actual cost or €600. If the OMC can't recover VAT, the VAT value is included in the grant award rather than left for the OMC to cover. These figures are reviewed periodically, so confirm the current rate and caps directly at seai.ie before finalising a budget.
- Two different starting points: if there's no charging network in the car park yet, the OMC applies for this grant to build one from scratch. If a network already exists, a resident instead applies individually for the separate Home Charger grant (the lesser of €300 or 100% of installation cost) to join it, rather than the OMC applying again.
- Rough cost before grant: total cost varies widely with car park size, existing electrical capacity and how many bays are wired at once, but a small development installing its first handful of shared charge points is typically looking at somewhere in the low tens of thousands of euro before grant funding is applied. A CPO quote is the only way to get a figure a board can actually vote on; this range is for sense-checking that quote, not for putting in a proposal.
- The Charge Point Operator requirement: the OMC must partner with an SEAI-registered Charge Point Operator (CPO) to get quotes, install the network, and, per SEAI's own guidance, manage billing and maintenance once it's live. This is worth understanding before assuming an app can simply be layered on afterwards: the CPO is the party SEAI holds responsible for the underlying network, not an optional installer.
That CPO requirement changes what "the grant doesn't cover" means in practice, and it's worth being precise about rather than glossing over.
The CPO is responsible for the network itself. Who gets to book a bay, and how fairly, is a separate question every OMC still has to answer.
The part the grant and the CPO don't settle: fair access
SEAI's guidance makes the CPO responsible for the underlying billing system and ongoing maintenance of the network, so it isn't accurate to say the grant leaves billing entirely unaddressed. What it doesn't settle is a narrower, more OMC-specific problem: does every resident have equal access to the chargers the CPO installed, or only some? What stops one car occupying the only charger overnight? How does a visiting family member charge without becoming a permanent user? And can the OMC show, if a dispute comes up, exactly who used which bay and when, rather than relying on the CPO's own account of it?
These questions sit outside the MUD Act, and they sit outside what a CPO's core network responsibility typically extends to as well; a CPO manages the charging infrastructure and its billing relationship with users, not the OMC's own resident booking policy, guest access rules, or fairness across a shared pool. That access and reporting layer is what De Energy Hub adds on top of whatever chargers and CPO arrangement are already in place, without any further building work, rewiring, or contractor visit, whether the network was installed years ago or funded through a grant approved last month.
Two access models, both supported
Shared pool
A smaller number of chargers serve the whole development. Residents book a time-limited session on whichever bay is free, with overstay alerts keeping the pool fair for everyone rather than dominated by whoever plugs in first.
Allocated bays
Where a charger serves one specific apartment's parking space, only that resident's code unlocks it: simple, private, and booked exclusively by that unit.
Either model runs on individual resident access codes rather than shared fobs, so every session is automatically logged against the unit that used it, leaving no guesswork if a dispute over usage does come up. Residents or the management company can also issue a temporary guest access code with a usage limit and expiry date, so a visiting family member can charge without becoming a permanent user of the estate's chargers.
💶 No invoicing for the management company
Residents book and pay for their own charging session directly through the app at the point of use: scan the QR code at the bay to identify it, check in via the app, and pay when the session ends. There's no separate metering reconciliation, no service-charge adjustment, and no invoicing step for the OMC or managing agent to carry out.
A practical path from proposal to live chargers
Timelines vary with the CPO's schedule and how quickly the OMC moves, but a realistic range from a member first raising it to chargers being live is four to nine months: weeks to get quotes and a costed proposal together, the wait for the next AGM or an EGM if the vote can't wait, then the CPO's own installation lead time once approved. Setting up De Energy Hub on top of the finished installation takes a day, not months.
- Bring the proposal to the OMC. Cost the installation, check current SEAI Apartment Charging Grant rates and caps at seai.ie, and put it to members via the sinking fund or an AGM/EGM resolution as the MUD Act requires.
- Partner with an SEAI-registered Charge Point Operator. If there's no network yet, the CPO quotes, installs the infrastructure, and takes on responsibility for its ongoing billing and maintenance; the physical chargers and cabling need to meet current electrical and fire safety standards for the car park as part of the works.
- Download De Energy Hub and set up a host profile. Choose a shared pool or allocated-bay model per site, and generate a QR code for each bay directly in the app, with no sensors or barriers required.
- Issue resident and guest codes. Every unit gets its own code; guest codes are issued as needed with a usage limit and expiry date.
- Residents book, scan, check in, and pay. From here, it runs itself, with no manual admin for the management company on a day-to-day basis.
🔥 Fire safety, especially in underground and enclosed car parks
"Meets current electrical and fire safety standards" in step 2 above is doing more work than it might look like, particularly where the car park is underground or otherwise enclosed. There is no single dedicated Irish regulation covering EV charging in car parks specifically yet; the CPO's installation instead has to comply with the general wiring rules that already apply to EV charging installations (Ireland follows the same technical basis as BS 7671 Section 722 via the national wiring rules) and with existing fire safety and building regulations for the car park itself. Regulation in this area is still catching up with how quickly EV charging has been added to existing buildings, so it's worth treating the CPO's fire safety sign-off as something to actually ask about, not assume.
Enclosed and underground car parks carry a higher risk profile than open-air surface parking: fire spreads more easily between adjacent bays, smoke and heat are harder to ventilate, and fire and rescue access is more constrained. Established guidance in this area (RISCAuthority's RC59 recommendations and the UK Office for Zero Emission Vehicles' covered car parks guidance, both widely referenced by fire engineers working on Irish developments in the absence of an Irish-specific equivalent) generally points to adequate spacing between charging bays, fire detection suited to the space, and clear emergency vehicle access as the baseline considerations for an enclosed car park adding EV charging.
In practice, this means asking the CPO for two things before works begin: confirmation that a fire risk assessment specific to the car park has been carried out, and confirmation of what mitigation, if any, it recommends for that space. It's also worth flagging the installation to the building's insurer directly, since some insurers now ask about EV charging fire provisions specifically when a policy is renewed.
A managing agent overseeing several developments doesn't need a separate setup for each one: every site can sit on the same De Energy Hub host profile, with bookings, queries and earnings for each development visible from one home screen.
See how it works for your development
De Energy Hub adds resident booking and billing on top of whatever chargers your development already has, with no rewiring and no new hardware.
See the apartments & estates page →
None of this replaces getting a proposal properly costed, grant-checked, and approved through the OMC's own process first. That part is genuinely legal and financial, and worth doing carefully. What changes is what happens after the chargers go in: instead of a car park nobody's tracking, every session is booked, logged and paid for against a specific unit, with no invoicing left for the management company to chase.
Frequently asked questions
Is an OMC legally required to provide EV charging for residents?
Not under current Irish law. The Multi-Unit Developments Act 2011 does not place a specific statutory duty on an OMC to install EV charging. It governs how the OMC manages the development generally, including how non-recurring expenditure like a charging installation gets approved and funded. Government policy has signalled the law may evolve here, but today the decision rests with the OMC and its members, usually made through the normal AGM or EGM process.
How does an OMC approve and pay for a shared EV charging installation?
Installing shared EV charging is treated as non-recurring, capital-type expenditure under the Multi-Unit Developments Act 2011, which usually means it's funded from the sinking fund or through a members' vote at an AGM or EGM, rather than from the annual service charge. Directors typically bring a costed proposal, informed by the SEAI Apartment Charging Grant where the development qualifies, for members to approve.
What does the SEAI Apartment Charging Grant cover, and who applies?
The grant is applied for by the OMC directly, along with Build-to-Rent management companies, Local Authorities, and Approved Housing Bodies; private and commercial landlords can also apply, but only for a bulk installation. It contributes toward the cabling, distribution infrastructure, metering and installation cost of shared EV charging. The funding level depends on applicant type: 90% for a Local Authority or Approved Housing Body, 80% for an OMC, 60% for a Build-to-Rent management company, applied to eligible costs. The overall award is capped at the lesser of €5,000 per dwelling or €100,000 per development, with each charge point separately capped at the lesser of its cost or €600. Because rates and caps are reviewed periodically, confirm the current figures directly on seai.ie before budgeting a proposal.
The grant covers installation. What handles the day-to-day running of the chargers?
Partly the Charge Point Operator (CPO) the OMC is required to partner with, and partly not. SEAI's guidance makes the CPO responsible for the underlying billing system and ongoing maintenance of the network itself. What that doesn't cover is the OMC's own resident access policy: whether every resident has fair access, how guest charging is handled, and whether the OMC can show exactly who used which bay if a dispute comes up. De Energy Hub is built to sit on top of the installed infrastructure and CPO arrangement and handle that access and reporting layer, without any further building work.
Does the OMC need to bill residents separately for electricity used?
No, if the chargers are managed through De Energy Hub. Residents book and pay for their own charging session directly through the app when they check in, so there's no separate invoicing, metering reconciliation, or service-charge adjustment for the management company to carry out.
Do the existing chargers need to be replaced or rewired to add booking and billing?
No. De Energy Hub adds resident booking on top of whatever chargers are already in the car park, whether they were installed years ago or funded through a recent SEAI grant. Each bay gets a QR code generated in the app; no sensors, barriers or contractor visit are required to add booking and billing to existing hardware.
Can a managing agent handle EV charging across several developments from one account?
Yes. A property management company overseeing multiple apartment blocks or estates can list every development on one De Energy Hub host profile, with bookings, queries and earnings for each site visible from a single home screen.
Can I install my own EV charger in my apartment's parking space?
Only with the OMC's written consent, even if the space is allocated to your unit and you're paying for it yourself. If you rent rather than own, you need your landlord's consent first, then the OMC's on top of that. The two wiring options are connecting to your own apartment meter, which only works if the meter is near the space, or connecting to the common area supply, which raises a billing question the OMC has to solve. Many boards prefer to fund one shared installation via the SEAI grant rather than approve individual connections case by case.
What can I do if the OMC refuses my request for a charger?
The most effective next step is usually proposing a shared, grant-funded installation covering the whole development rather than pursuing a single connection, ideally with other EV-owning or EV-planning residents backing the proposal at the next AGM. A costed, whole-development proposal is far more likely to be approved than a one-off individual request. The MUD Act's Circuit Court dispute route exists for genuine disputes but is rarely the right first step for what is usually a capacity or fairness concern rather than a legal one.
Is EV charging safe in an underground apartment car park?
There's no dedicated Irish regulation covering EV charging in car parks specifically yet, so the CPO's installation has to comply with the general wiring rules that already apply to EV charging plus existing fire safety and building regulations for the car park itself. Enclosed and underground car parks carry a higher risk profile than open-air parking, so it's worth asking the CPO for confirmation that a fire risk assessment specific to the car park has been carried out and what mitigation it recommends, and flagging the installation to the building's insurer directly.
Last updated 23 August 2026. Legal information on the Multi-Unit Developments Act 2011 is general guidance only. SEAI Apartment Charging Grant figures, funding levels, caps and the Charge Point Operator requirement verified directly against SEAI's own grant page (seai.ie/grants/electric-vehicle-grants/electric-vehicle-charging/apartment-charging-grant) and its official application guide. Fire safety guidance references RISCAuthority's RC59 recommendations and the UK Office for Zero Emission Vehicles' covered car parks guidance, cited as no dedicated Irish-specific equivalent currently exists; this is general information, not a fire risk assessment, and any specific installation needs its own assessment from the CPO or a qualified fire safety professional. None of this constitutes legal, financial or fire safety advice; confirm current grant rates, caps and eligibility directly at seai.ie, and take independent advice on any specific OMC decision. Product details verified against app/apartments-estates.html.