Mr. Martin McSorley:

Before I answer that question I will reply to the previous question. The profit we make on fuel is per litre. If I sell a litre at €1 or €2 I make 5 cent. It does not matter what the price is. I do not make a percentage of the selling price. We will not see excess profits being made by anybody. The Government is making more because it gets a percentage of VAT. As the price rises it gets more but we do not. We get the exact same no matter what. We will make less because since this has happened our volumes have decreased by more than half. I have a site that was doing 35,000 l a week and it is now doing 14,000 l a week because I cannot sell the stock that is in the ground.

When it comes to competition I fear the 500 members of the IPRA will not be available to meet the committee in five years because most of them will be gone. The reason for this is we cannot survive on the small margins we are getting. We are losing volume year after year. Bigger operations are wiping us out. Other than this, we are also being absolutely destroyed by overheads. Earlier we spoke about electric cars. Five years ago, I was paying 17 cent a unit for electricity; now I am paying 40 cent. The electricity bill on my site in Wexford has increased from €36,000 in 2017 to €110,000 this year. With increases like this, electric cars will eventually not be profitable either because it will cost a fortune to charge them.