Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I put in an amendment on the particular point I am going to address but unfortunately I, like many others, was restricting my movements during Committee Stage of this Bill and was not able to attend from outside the precincts. Therefore we were not able to put this amendment on today's paper but it relates to the amendment being discussed at the moment as it concerns VAT on fuel. This is a real point. I genuinely want to bring it to the Minister's attention for consideration because it is an important issue. It is a beneficial issue for society and it is really critical for a section of society that is very important.

Right now across Ireland we have small bus companies. These are the bus companies that pick kids up from school and drop them back. This includes children with disabilities who are being picked up and brought to special schools. These are bus companies that are bringing patients to and from hospitals, and so on. As the Minister knows, the nature of their business is they tender for these contracts. They tender on the understanding of a certain price of fuel and they are locked into those prices for the duration of those contracts. Most of those companies have had the fuel component of their enterprise radically increase over the last while. Bus companies are in a strange position in that they are VAT-exempt, so to speak. They do not pass VAT on. They do not charge customers VAT. Instead they pay VAT for the materials they consume in the delivery of their enterprises. Thus, they are paying VAT on fuel and paying it on every single thing they do but they are not getting VAT back and it is a big difficulty for them.

I gather there are some systems involving rebates etc. but my understanding is the amount of time and cost it takes to get an accountant to do the work on all that means it is not worth it for many businesses to chase down that rebate. I suggest these bus companies be zero-rated for tax. In other words, they would not be passing that VAT on to the consumer because obviously these bus companies are a tool in the Government's project to increase the level of public transport around the country and get people out of their cars to reduce the amount of CO2 being emitted. We do not want to pass on any extra costs to the consumer. We want them to be able to get the cheapest possible public transport available. We also need to allow these businesses to be able to get back VAT they are paying. The whole idea of VAT is that it is a value added tax but it is not operating as such in the bus sector. Instead it is operating as a block tax. Perhaps while the Minister is addressing these particular amendments he might give us his views, and hopefully his interest, in resolving this difficulty as well.

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