Cheaper motoring is the last thing world needs

PAUL O’RIAIN writes claiming tax on diesel and petrol is driving inflation up.

However, in real terms (allowing for inflation) taxes have been decreasing. The price of oil has doubled in the last year, and it is this which is driving up the price.

The government has been spending up to €10 billion a year on roads. However, most of the costs are externalised; it has recently been revealed that the real number of road casualties, based on hospital admissions, is three and a half times the figures claimed by the RSA/AA/Garda. The public health costs due to pollution and global warming are astronomical too.

Motorists have only themselves to blame. Road transport is entirely oil dependent, and car numbers are increasing exponentially. Oil is a “non-elastic” commodity. Production has peaked, resulting in higher prices, wars, and environmentally destructive “fracking”, and the use of oil shale and tar sands.

Cheaper motoring is the last thing we need, it only aggravates the problems, but this is exactly what governments do by failing to introduce road charging and with subsidies for scrappage, electric cars and biofuels, which has tripled the cost of cereals, resulting in inflation and starvation in the Third World.

Michael Job

Glengarriff

Co Cork