Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

We seem to have an annual discussion on the type and scale of duties imposed on motor vehicles. I remember expressing similar sentiments last year, namely, that the measure we use for charging is crude. I and my party would like to see the introduction of a slightly more sophisticated measuring system. Instead of looking at the capacity of the engine, we should consider other issues, such as sustainability. We could closely examine transportation and the effect it has on sustainability. Instead of looking at the size of an engine, we should look at other indicators and reflect those in the type of charging system we use. The most obvious indicator is the carbon dioxide or climate change emissions from a vehicle. That data is readily available. It is not rocket science to find out what type of emissions come from an exhaust pipe and to reflect that in the charging mechanism we use or to reflect the more basic pollution load the vehicle creates. It would be easy to examine the basic pollution produced by a particular make, model and size of car. I am upset that the Department is not examining this in any detail and is not reflecting it in its charging system. It would make sense to incorporate this into the measures used.

I note that the annual charge changes depending on the engine capacity and that the charge per cubic centimetre is low at the lower end of the scale and rises fairly substantially at the top. However, in looking at the scale, the increase per cubic centimetre seems to stop at about 2.5 litres and continues on a linear scale at higher levels. Even using the current crude scale instead of having a staggered or escalator tax, it would be possible to have a more linear equation that would continue to hit those who insist on driving cars with very large engines. There should be an increasing charge per cubic centimetre for cars with a capacity of more than 2.5 litres.

We should also consider factors such as the kinds of accidents and severity of accidents caused by particular types of car. This week an article in The New Yorker magazine investigated the kind of accidents that particular types of vehicles cause. It specifically considered what the Americans call a sport utility vehicle, SUV, or what we would call a four-wheel drive, Jeep-type vehicle, and the typical accidents in which those vehicles are involved. It is not surprising to discover that the larger and more protected the vehicle is for the occupants, the more damage it causes to others.

Some vehicles on the market with kangaroo or bull bars — huge bumpers — and very high cab positions represent the equivalent of a tank. The kind of damage they do when they hit smaller cars, pedestrians and vulnerable road users such as cyclists and motorcyclists is massive. The Department should investigate this and consider a taxing structure to reflect the greater damage these vehicles cause. Fortunately, as yet we do not have many of the Humvee-type Jeeps on Irish roads. Essentially a pedestrian hit by such a vehicle would be dead.

We are all familiar with the statistics that show a pedestrian hit at 20 miles an hour has a 95% chance of survival and 5% chance of being killed; that at 30 miles an hour it is 50:50; and that at 40 miles an hour, nine and a half times out of ten the pedestrian will die. However a more sophisticated measure exists to the effect that the kind of armour or protection a vehicle has, if it is one of these four-wheel drive vehicles, ensures it becomes a deadly weapon. A school of thought believes we should introduce a super tax on the height of the driver above the road. While this is a crude barometer, it reflects that the higher the driver, the more damage a vehicle tends to do to another vehicle or road user.

I introduce this matter to suggest that the Department should consider other indicators in the debate on vehicle taxation. The transportation sector is one of the major offenders in sustainability, regardless of whether we define sustainability as climate change emissions or the number of road deaths. The private car has led to carnage in its brief 100 years of existence. While for many the car has been a liberator, the lives of many others, including almost all in this Chamber, have been touched by death and injury on the roads. My party recommends more sophisticated measures to introduce more equity in an important area of taxation.

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