Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for her reply. I emphasise that I am clearly not talking about motor tax abolition; I am talking about giving a break to motorists at the moment in respect of a Government charge on an activity that is already heavily taxed and is already extremely expensive because of a number of factors, many of which are outside the control of the Government. While I am not talking about abolition, I am talking about giving people a bit of breathing space for a limited period because motorists are already paying more than anyone ever anticipated to get from A to B.

Because of the structuring of our motor taxation system, doing that would give owners of older vehicles, people who are typically less well off, more of a break than owners of newer vehicles because the ridiculous system we have taxes older cars much more. Someone can drive a newer car with a value of multiples of that of an older car and pay a fraction of what the owner of the older car pays. This would be a very fair measure.

I very much welcome some of the positive interventions, including reducing the prices of public transport. However, those interventions do not affect rural dwellers for whom public transport is not an option. It is either non-existent or not responsive to their needs in getting from A to B, getting to work, or dropping children to school, childcare or elsewhere. This would be a targeted measure to give those people a bit of help with their transport costs because they cannot avail of the Government interventions in reducing public transport prices.

In conjunction with the Department of Finance, the Department of Transport needs to give this further consideration. This measure could be introduced pre-budget through a statutory instrument. I ask the Minister of State to reconsider the matter to give the hard-pressed motorists of the country a bit of a break because we know things will not get easier any time soon. The Government needs to reduce any charges it is putting on motorists as much as we can. We can control some things and we need to intervene where we can do so.

See this speech in context