Last week, the Irish Government took a decision at cabinet level to increase the tax on fuel and diesel. As a result of that decision, the average price for a litre of either rose by about six cents. If you have, like most people, a fifty litre tank in your car, that means the price of an average fill will have risen by about a fiver.
This week, Transport Infrastructure Ireland, the company responsible for the M50 toll and other tolling booths on the nation’s motorway network, announced that their previously delayed price increase would come into effect from the first of July. That increase will mean that the average commuter who uses the M50 twice a day, or ten times a week, will pay about two euros more per week for their travel.
In terms of the total cost of those two decisions, the difference could barely be greater: The fuel tax increase, which hits everybody (regardless of what roads they use) will garner for the exchequer, according to the Government itself, about €700m. The toll tag price increase, according to Transport Infrastructure Ireland, will raise about €12.5m over the same period. The Government is taking fifty-six times more from the pockets of Irish commuters than the toll companies are.
So naturally, Government wants it to be known: They’re on the side of the commuter:
MINISTERS ARE ENGAGING with the toll companies over the planned price hikes coming in July, according to Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys.
Speaking to The Journal on Árainn Mhór Island, Co Donegal this afternoon, she said “any increase in tolls always comes as a disappointment to the motorists and particularly the hauliers as well”.
…. “I know that Minister [Eamon] Ryan and Minister [Jack] Chambers are looking at this and I know that they’re engaging with the toll companies,” Humphreys said today.
When asked if there could be another deferral of the price hikes, she said “it is a matter for Minister Ryan and Minister Chambers. So as I said, I know that they’re engaging with the toll companies”.
In this case, the Government is playing the role of Father Ted, and expecting you, the motoring public, to play the role of Bishop Brennan. “No, I would never kick you up the arse. Sure I think you’re great”.
The problem, simply put, is that they did kick us up the arse, just last week. And now they’re pretending to be our friends because they don’t want us to sit down on the bruise, effectively.
This kind of thing only works if the electorate is genuinely and legitimately stupid, or, at the very least, just too busy with life to notice that the people who robbed them last week are at their side this week pretending to be their guardian angels.
In that wager, the Government has one major ally: The media. The media will, of course, with the exception of yours truly, not make the connection between the tax increase last week and the tough talk about road tolling this week. There are several reasons for that, the foremost being that the media is exactly as idiotic and limited in attention span as the Government hopes the public is. The other reason is that the tax increase is or can be linked to climate change, and therefore any journalist with any aspiration for any kind of post-journalism career in the sprawling NGO and political sectors needs to know on which side their bread is buttered. It’s not the side where you are even suspected of objecting to a Green Tax.
A price increase by a company, though, is different: Journalists can make a bit of a song and dance about that because the price increase serves no wider policy goal. The funds raised aren’t intended to save the planet, or provide sustenance to the underprivileged. Instead, they’re going into the pockets of corporate executives. This is the wrong kind of looting from the public, and it can, therefore, be safely opposed.
And so this is how the Government gets away with robbing Peter, and then defending Peter from the very next robber that comes along, in the full expectation that Peter will be grateful. It is because they believe you are a complete eejit who won’t notice, and are confident that the media are servile enough not to point it out.
The only question, really, is whether the Government is right. Sadly, I think they are.