Boss of Cork car dealership says fuel increase is ‘making people's lives harder’

THE managing director of a car dealership in Cork has said the Government is “making people’s lives harder” by increasing the cost of motoring.

Denis Murphy of Blackwater Motors has raised concerns about the increase in the cost of fuel, with petrol increasing by 4c per litre and diesel increasing by 3c in the Government’s latest step to restore excise rates after a temporary cut was introduced two years ago.

The hike comes despite calls for a further delay in fuel excise hikes that had been postponed in October until now.

Postponed

Mr Murphy, who is also a spokesperson for the Irish Car Carbon Reduction Alliance, said the Government has made motoring more expensive for those who can ill afford it and have no alternative.

“All the Government is doing is making people’s lives harder by making it more difficult to commute by increasing the cost of motoring — which has increased substantially over the course of this Government,” he said.

“It has achieved nothing. Emissions in transport are going up when they should be going down in accordance with their policies. Their policies have failed.

“The only way you are going to reduce transport emissions in Ireland is to either make people drive less or drive more fuel-efficient cars, whatever type of cars that means.

“They were told that they were going to fail, but they continue to make motoring more expensive to stop people driving their cars. It is a triumphant failure of ideology from pragmatism.

“They have increased the price of cars substantially and increased the cost of motoring substantially through carbon taxes, excise duty, and toll roads, and they’re achieving the exact opposite of what they set out to do, which was to reduce emissions.

“They should go back and say: ‘What we have done has failed and let’s try something different’, but they don’t care and that’s the most disappointing thing.”

Emissions

Ireland’s national emissions reduction target is to reach net zero across all sectors of the economy by 2050, with a reduction of 51% by 2030, which equates to an average annual reduction of over 7%.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest emissions data, however, decreased emissions in 2022 compared to 2021 were observed in the largest sectors except for transport, waste, and commercial services which increased in emissions by 6%, 4.9%, and 0.2%, respectively.

Mr Murphy said that high tax rates on new cars have also driven up the sales of older cars, which he said has “completely negated the impact of electric vehicles on the road”.