Fuel price hikes highlight need for change

PUMPED UP? Allegations of price gouging have angered consumers and government alike.

Shopping around now a must for Mayo motorists


The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has accelerated a growing problem around the world – the price of fuel.
It is a First World problem to be complaining about fuel prices when a democratic nation is under vicious attack, but there is no doubt it is having quite the impact across Ireland.
With a litre of petrol and diesel crossing the €2 mark in recent weeks, it has become the second-most-common topic of conversation, next to the war in the Ukraine.
We’ve been running our Mayo News fuel survey since 2010, and it has underscored how volatile prices can be.
In 2010, the cheapest fuel in the county was Gallagher’s in Charlestown, where a litre of petrol cost €1.28.9 and diesel was €1.19.9.
Three years later, the prices were the highest ever in our survey before this year, with the cheapest being €1.49.9 per litre of petrol and €1.41.9 per litre of diesel.
The graph was far from linear though. In 2016, a litre of petrol was as low as €1.26.9 and diesel €1.09.8. Diesel even went under €1 a few weeks later.
Our 2019 survey saw prices climbing, up to €1.39.8 for petrol (cheapest) and €1.28.8 for diesel.
Our 2022 survey, published on March 1 last, saw the cheapest being €1.72.8 for petrol and €162.8 for diesel. That was in Higgins’s Applegreen in Claremorris, but there was quite a gulf to the highest – ten cents per litre in petrol and fully 15 cents for diesel.
It was, we reckoned, only a matter of time before the €2 mark would be scaled, but no one could have considered just how quickly the prices would pierce that ceiling.

Price anomalies
This time last week, prices were clearing €2 in many filling stations all across the county. For those who cover long distances, these prices were and remain extremely prohibitive.  
Unusually, the price per litre of diesel outstripped the price for petrol, when it is typically in the region of ten cent per litre lower.
News that Government would cut taxes on fuel was welcome but absolutely necessary to address the issue in the short term.
Figures provided by the AA show that various taxes amounted to 98 cent per litre of petrol and 85 cent per litre of diesel. The Government announced a cut of 20 cent per litre of diesel and 15 cent per litre of petrol. This, combined with a drop in the price of fuel as supply catches up with demand, has led to an overall drop in prices across the county.
It can be hard to establish how much of the tax and the drop in price of oil has been passed onto the customer and how much has been pocketed by the filling stations.
It is unclear, for instance, whether different filling stations have bought at the new price or are still operating with supply from the old price.
Price gouging was very transparent in some filling stations around the country with the Government’s tax reduction prompting some to immediately hiking their prices by 15 to 20 cent – putting it on to take it off. A contemptible act, and any business doing so ought to suffer from a lack of trade as a consequence.
Such practices were not readily apparent in Mayo, but prices still fluctuate.
Our sample survey of over 25 stations in the county on Sunday evening and Monday morning show as much as 23 cents per litre of diesel between the cheapest and the dearest and a 24-cent gulf in petrol.
It shows the worth of shopping around.

Local similarities
Our survey has also demonstrated over the years that prices tend to be broadly similar in filling stations in one town but can vary considerably from one town to the next.
Ballina and Claremorris tend to be very cheap on a consistent basis since 2010. Westport and Ballinrobe tend to be more pricey, while Castlebar was the most expensive town in our most recent full survey.
The mark-up on fuel for the filling stations is not huge. One of the more-competitive stations told us it is 4 cent per litre. It is obviously more in more-expensive locations, unless remote locations have to be considered.
So while it is easy to lecture about prices, it should be borne in mind that there are far greater mark-ups in other products. Coffee, for instance, is worth a fortune to stores.
But we would also argue that now is a time for filling stations to be as competitive as they can be on fuel because everyone is feeling its pinch.

Public transport
In the longer term, this latest episode is a reminder, not that we should need it, of the costs involved with a reliance on fossil fuels.
Public transport simply isn’t an option for the vast majority of us in rural Ireland. We need more bus and rail routes, more frequent services, faster travel times and more affordable prices.
Not a lot to ask, eh? Well that’s the mess successive governments have made of our public transport system.
A move towards electric vehicles makes prudent sense on one level, but the cost of the actual cars remains prohibitive to most.
It will remain a conundrum in the short term, at the least.