Another road toll? Motorists in Cork already pay out enough

BY any yardstick you care to use, Irish motorists are taxed to the hilt.

Whenever we buy a car, pay its road tax, have it fixed, and, of course, when we fill up the tank, the Exchequer is rubbing its hands. They have us over a barrel.

Although Ireland has one of the worst public transport networks in Europe, we pay far more to be a car owner here than almost all our neighbours.

The average annual tax revenue per motor vehicle in Ireland is the third highest in Europe, at €2,438 - far higher than the likes of Germany (€1,764), France (€1,625), and Spain (€1,148.

Take the VAT rate on car purchases. According to 2022 figures, Ireland charges 23% on this, a rate higher than the UK, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany.

And it will surprise no-one to hear that we pay huge taxes at the pumps - the Exchequer received €3.8bn last year alone in tax on fuel, the highest tally in a decade.

That €3.8bn figure is important to bear in mind, as we prepare to see the Cork-Limerick road finally be upgraded to a motorway, at a cost of €2bn.

That €2bn sounds like a drop in the ocean, doesn’t it, compared to the billions the Government rakes in from taxing the hard-pressed motorist in any given year?

But wait...

Because all the taxes paid by motorists are seemingly not enough alone to pay for this long-awaited stretch of improved road between Ireland’s second and third largest cities.

Now we have learned that road users will have to pay via tolls for the improvements which will cut travel times between the two cities by up to 30 minutes.

Motorists who pay through the nose , often because they simply have no alternative, are being tipped upside down yet again and having their pockets emptied by a mindset that cannot see a driver without picturing a cash cow.

I have long disliked the concept of road tolls. Motorists are quite simply paying for the same thing twice (or hundreds of times over, if you count each transaction as separate).

They are also a grossly unfair eircode lottery; some motorists would never use a toll from one year to the next, others have to use them almost daily, all because of a fluke of where they happen to live.

We pay vast sums in motor tax to finance roads, and they then want us to pay for our long-delayed new road to Limerick too, every time we use it?

Apparently, they want a toll without booths in this case, and to charge drivers for how much of the new road they use.

Although not as inconvenient as the hassle of sourcing coins and stopping at toll booths, this method still entails the motorist having to remember to pay their tolls, or incur fines.

As someone who drive through the M50 toll recently and promptly forgot about it for a week, this booth-free system is still a pain - not to mention a drain on finances.

The new Cork-Limerick route will see travel times reduced significantly, which is good news for the environment and for drivers - then they go and spoil the good news by throwing in a toll.

The barrier-free toll system also sounds complicated, and the type of scheme many motorists may endeavour to get around by using back roads and rat-runs.

Even then, with a projected 40,000 vehicles using the new road each day, it will be a licence to print money for the toll operators.

Is there a better business model anywhere than that of toll operators? If so, I would dearly love to hear it and invest a few bob.

For the new road to Limerick, they will have a captive audience of hundreds of vehicles a day, a figure that will surely grow over time. The money pours into their coffers and it appears they will barely need any staff to service the system. Nice work if you can get it.

It’s now 18 years since the Fermoy bypass section of the N8 opened its toll booths, and every day since, the operators have been raking in cash.

The company behind it, Directroute, will continue to operate the tolls for another decade, until 2034, when it will hand it back to the National Roads Authority.

This kind of public-private partnerships will always be skewed towards being made worthwhile for the private company - otherwise no company would want to get involved in such a venture.

Back in 2010, our cash-strapped Government tried to get in on the tolls act at a time when public finances were in dire straits. The National Roads Authority proposed that tolls be put on the Jack Lynch tunnel and on the South Link Road, in a bid to raise revenue.

There was a public outcry, and commuters who used the tunnel twice daily worked out it would cost them €1,000 a year. The Cork branch of the Irish Road Haulage Association promised to boycott the tunnel if any toll was introduced.

The toll proposal was quietly shelved a few years later by then Transport Minister Leo Varadkar, after Cork Chamber of Commerce argued it would pose a serious threat to the region’s economic development and be “deeply counterproductive”.

That’s a good argument against tolling any new road - along with the most pertinent one: That motorists are already being fleeced enough in taxation.