The Irish Road Haulage Association (RHA), is strongly lobbying the Government ahead of the budget, not to penalise the haulage industry again, which has suffered badly over recent years due to recession and high road and fuel taxes. Everyone is aware of transport companies that have shut up shop, or the hundreds of vehicles up and down the country lying idle. The IRHA has put forward proposals to address this problem, rather that the normal budget process of making it worse.

Firstly, it is calling for the government to differentiate between discretionary and non-discretionary users of fuel and implement a fuel duty reduction for commercial road users. It also wants an incentive scheme to encourage companies to purchase Euro V and Euro VI vehicles and tax refunds on the cost of purchasing the Ad-Blue additive required to facilitate their operation.

Central to the RHA submission is a proposal to scrap road tax for heavy goods vehicles and to introduce ‘Pay as You Go’ charges for the entire national road network. This, the IRHA says, would save many Irish transport companies and generate tax revenue from foreign haulage operators using Irish roads. Similar tax models already operate in Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden and the Netherlands. Here tariffs are paid by day, week, month or year for use of roads based on the number of axels and vehicle emissions.

Currently Irish operators pay on average €2,500 per year to tax a vehicle, a figure which makes it uneconomical for many to even take to the road.  Meanwhile foreign truckers use Irish roads for free, while Irish trucks have to pay charges in the Euro zone countries that have now applied these charges.