Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. According to the briefing document, the increases in the CO2 bands A and B are 53.8% and 44.2%, respectively. The average change is approximately 7.5%. We established the system to try to reduce emissions, but it would also reduce revenue by 40%. It has become an unfortunate feature of our circumstances that, in the taxpayer's dealings with the Exchequer, it is a case of heads the Exchequer wins, tails the taxpayer loses. Similarly, development levies and stamp duties were ignored in respect of the household charge. We try to be environmentally sensitive. When that works, we increase charges. Broadly, I accept what the Government is trying to do in terms of cars. The situation poses the Exchequer's revenues a considerable difficulty.

On Committee Stage, I will discuss how, according to page 6 of the briefing document, the assessment of motor tax on commercial goods vehicles is governed by the unladen weight. I will ask the Minister of State to examine this proposal. The key element is not unladen weight, but laden weight per axle. Vehicles of the same unladen weight can do substantially different damage to infrastructure. Some cause potholes and some do not.

The "polluter pays" principle rewards people who reduce emissions and in the same way we could have a "potholer pays" principle if we changed the way in which we tax heavy goods vehicles. That is the reason I tabled the amendment.

There is the issue of using tax as payment for roads. We ignored cost-benefit analysis from the Economic and Social Research Institute in building motorways with a capacity of 55,000 vehicles per day on routes that in some cases had less than 10% of those vehicles on them. It was massive over-investment for which the motorist and road user is being asked to pay. Mr. Peter O'Keeffe at An Foras Forbartha Teoranta was doing cost-benefit analyses of roads in the late 1960s and the late Mr. Garret FitzGerald recommended the reading of an article by Mr. O'Keeffe in Administrationin 1964. I did some work with Mr. John McCarrick, the Kildare county engineer, on the evaluation of the Naas bypass. We had the analysis to know when road investment is worthwhile and when it has the level of traffic to justify investment, but in the era of easy money from Brussels, we ignored that analysis, which left debt liabilities but not enough activity to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio. In future, any construction of motorways should be accompanied by tolls and studies to prove the roads are worthwhile. Nevertheless, everyone would like if a motorway could be financed from a common pool and there were no charges.

There is a need for a greater link between the kind of economics Mr. O'Keeffe and Mr. McCarrick had combined with engineering to ensure we put the money into good and worthwhile projects rather than precipitating the difficulties in the national finances. We could reduce substantially the number of potholes caused by wrongly configured heavy goods vehicles in the country if we moved to a taxation system based on the axle load of a laden vehicle rather than the unladen weight of a vehicle. The current system was inherited from history but why would potholing ever cease if we did not design a tax system rewarding vehicles that do not cause potholes while penalising the vehicles that do? The Minister has the ability, in the schedule of taxation to tackle the problem and I hope that will be done in the next year. Much of the research that would assist in moving to a more environmentally and economically sensible way of configuring our road freight fleet has already been done.