Motor Fuel Retailers classed as “gougers” have every right to be angry at those politicians and media commentators who display a “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality.
Paper doesn’t refuse ink and several elected public representatives, including Taoiseach Micheál Martin couldn’t resist the urge to belittle the hard-working people in the fuel retailing sector with ill-advised and untruthful assertions against them, never once reflecting on how far off the mark similar comments in the past were found to have been once the CCPC investigated , and published their findings.
The Taoiseach has numerous Special Advisers as well as dozens of civil servants perfectly capable of providing him with a briefing on how the oil retail sector works. To make allegations without a scrap of evidence against an entire sector is an appalling action and no doubt led to the barrage of abuse we saw in the hours and days that followed.
To be fair to Minister Peter Burke, once he was made aware that there were unacceptable levels of abuse and threats being levelled at owners and employees of filling stations, he arranged for Press Releases condemning such behaviour. This action, and subsequent focusing on the real facts has gone a long way to restore civility in our interactions with the highly taxed motorist.
While there may be legitimate questions that need to be asked of wholesalers, distributors and suppliers regarding actual stock levels, anyone with even a morsel of knowledge of the retail fuel sector will know that our tank capacities, the costs of storage and the unbelievably short timescales between delivery and payment would automatically rule out any real potential for profiteering or fleecing our customers.
Independent service station owners play an incredibly important role in the Irish retail sector; they do not have the cushion or buffer that (oil) company-owned, (oil) company operated sites have who benefit from a completely different module that incorporates wholesale and retail margins and notional transfers of costs.
Towards the end of last week, the very high levels of taxation on fuels was correctly identified as being an outlier in European Terms , and should be the easiest to temporarily remove if our Government saw fit to so do.
We have made both the Taoiseach and Tánaiste aware that our fuel retailers deserve to be treated as all other citizens are, innocent until proven otherwise.
