Motor tax hike not the way to go

IN VIEW of the proposed motor tax increases, I wonder if Environment Minister John Gormley is living in the real world.

Apparently now a 1.6-litre car is classified as ‘big’. Pray tell what logic is behind this?

If any family is lucky enough to have three teenagers, what car can safely accommodate them? As far as I can see, pretty much nothing with an engine capacity less than 1.6 litres is available with sufficient capacity to seat three more or less fully grown people in the rear. Squashing three people in the rear of a small car is neither safe nor clever.

Can anyone tell me what size car does Mr Gormley recommend for anyone with requirements to carry four or more children? Try getting a six or seven-seater with an engine smaller than1.6 litres?

For a lot of these types of vehicle a small engine such as a 1.6-litre also carries an inherent danger. These engines do not have sufficient power to perform simple overtaking manoeuvres, for example, in a safe manner.

Similarly, small cars, while perfectly adequate for city driving, are manifestly unsafe in the event of a collision at any speed exceeding an urban limit. But, apparently, Dublin 4-based Mr Gormley sees no problem with people all over the country being compelled fiscally to buy such cars. This latest move has obviously been designed by someone without any idea of cars and how they work. Cars, first of all, should be safe and, secondly, economical and environmentally clean. It has been mentioned that this latest initiative is an effort to make the polluter pay. But we already pay a huge amount of tax on fuel and, as the Greens seem not to realise, the more one drives, the more one pays.

Environmental initiatives should be based on ‘polluter pays’ principles, not ownership taxes. The 1.4-litre car doing 50,000km per year is more harmful to the environment than the three litre car doing 10,000km, yet this proposal is to hit the latter, not the former, having nothing to do with actual pollution. What about the fleet of ministerial cars, each one doing in the region of 150,000km per year, with large engine capacities? Not one penny in tax is paid by ministers for their use.

Taxing cars based on engine capacity is not the way to go. It makes no allowance for the actual carbon emissions of the car, for the fuel type or for the safety aspects involved in propelling a car. It’s all well and good for a man who can commute on a bicycle to be lecturing the rest of us, but he really needs to get outside the Pale and see how the real world operates. Until people have a safe, reliable alternative to the car, they should not be penalised for using one.

Peadar Gill

Crossafehin

Virginia

Co Cavan