Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on haulage costs for SMEs. If you run a small business in this country, nothing reaches your customer without a truck somewhere along the line. Every pallet into a supermarket, every consignment into a chemist and every online order delivered to a home in Dún Laoghaire depends on a haulier who is watching diesel, tolls, insurance and wages every day. When their costs rise, everyone’s costs rise.

We acknowledge the Government stepped in when the shock of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine sent fuel prices soaring. Two temporary haulage support schemes in 2022 and 2023 provided €15.6 million each year and reached roughly three quarters of licensed operators. That helped keep doors open and kept people in work at a vulnerable moment. We also have the diesel rebate scheme. Above €1.43 per litre, hauliers can receive up to 7.5 cent per litre back. However, only 45% of operators claim it. That tells me two things, the of first of which is we need a stronger information push, especially for smaller operators without a back-office team, and the second of which is that if the scheme is not attractive or accessible enough for SMEs, we should be open to tweaking it.

Fuel is only one part of the picture though. Hauliers are being hit by a wide range of cost drivers, including insurance, the price of new trucks, labour shortages, the UK HGV road user levy and the cost of meeting new standards. Some of these are necessary, such as better training, higher safety standards and decarbonisation, but we owe it to SMEs to take cost out of the system wherever we can. One example shows how decisions up the line can land on small operators or small business customers, namely, the emergency generators stuck in Dublin Port for over a year. Last year I tabled parliamentary questions about these generators, which were parked in the port because they are too heavy to cross the M50 toll bridge. I raised it again this week seeking a report. These units were purchased to protect our security of electricity supply, yet tens of millions of euro worth of equipment sat idle, with storage costs, delay costs and uncertainty throughout the supply chain. These generators are not SME assets but big-ticket items owned by major utilities. However, when our permitting and infrastructure systems are so complex and fragmented they can strand such equipment for over a year, we should be honest these costs will end up on the bills of households and small businesses and on the haulage invoices SMEs are paying. That case underlines the need for more joined-up thinking between transport, energy and climate policy. We cannot have one part of the system encouraging new backup plant and grid investment and another part making it practically impossible, or prohibitively expensive, to move a transformer or generator from port to site.

The same applies to decarbonisation. Ireland’s Road Haulage Strategy 2022–2031, work on alternative fuels including HVO, hydrogen and biomethane, the zero-emission heavy duty vehicle, HDV, grant scheme and new HDV charging infrastructure are all essential if we are to meet our 2030 and 2050 climate targets. SMEs will judge us not on the number of strategies we publish but on whether the new options are affordable and usable in the real world.

I propose three practical steps. The first is to use the road freight forum to identify and fix pinch points that drive unnecessary cost, delays in abnormal-load permitting, unclear data on bridge capacities and duplication of paperwork across agencies. A single reliable database can remove friction from every single job. The second step is to design climate measures in a way that helps rather than penalises smaller operators. We should make sure the diesel rebate scheme is fully taken up and ensure alternative fuel grants are sized so that small, family-run hauliers can access them, not just the big fleets. The third step is to keep a close eye on the labour side. Adjustments to the employment permit quotas and expansions of apprenticeships and traineeships are welcome but we must also ensure the profession's long hours and tough work are compatible with a decent family life. Retaining skilled drivers is one of the cheapest ways to keep costs lower.

Haulage is the bloodstream of the SME economy. If we want lower costs for small businesses and households, we need a system that moves goods efficiently, safely and cleanly and one that does not leave generators stranded in ports or SMEs picking up the tab for avoidable bureaucracy. I look forward to working with the Minister of State to ensure our policies are aligned, strategies are implemented and the cost of moving goods in Ireland remains as competitive as possible.

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