Mr. Kevin McPartlan:

I get the concern. It is that hard-pressed consumers are now spending 50% more to fill their cars than they were spending a year ago. I get that that is frustrating, but that does not necessarily mean that the people selling that fuel are "gouging" people, to use language that has been used today. It reflects the market conditions. In response to the specific question about the global oil majors, the Ukraine situation is four weeks old. I do not believe that any financial reporting can accurately say what the impact of those four weeks has been at this point. Specifically, do I think that Fuels for Ireland members will report bumper profits as a result of this? Absolutely not. As the committee has heard from some of the independent retailers, just as they took a bath, to use a colloquialism, on prices immediately after the excise duty cut, it is very likely that some of the majors also took serious losses in the immediate term to try, first, to meet consumer expectations that prices were going to come down and, second, to protect their staff from the abuse and threats we have talked about. That decision was influenced by the situation. When we had more than one Cabinet Minister standing at a podium telling people they could expect price reductions at midnight that night when they knew - or, if they did not, they should have known - that was not true.