Scrapping diesel dye 'would save country €628m a year'

Bullseye1

Reading this makes you wonder why they don't scrap it and offer the rebate as suggested. It would also mean the customs and garda officers time could be better spent.

http://news.eircom.net/breakingnews/21218407/?view=Standard

ardmacha

Generally a great idea. Firstly, it would have to done on a cross border basis. Secondly, heating oil can also be processed into dodgy fuel.

creedp

Bullseye1 wrote: »

Reading this makes you wonder why they don't scrap it and offer the rebate as suggested. It would also mean the customs and garda officers time could be better spent.

http://news.eircom.net/breakingnews/21218407/?view=Standard

How will this be monitored though ... will the farmer be able to fuel up his 4x4 and head for Croke Park .. reduce the cost of supporting your county! Will the business persons' offspring/sibling/etc be able to call to the place of business and brim his car whenever he wants to? etc, etc.

Are we in danger or replacing one flawed system with another? Not saying this is a bad option but just wondering how is would be implemented.

Godge

Bullseye1 wrote: »

Reading this makes you wonder why they don't scrap it and offer the rebate as suggested. It would also mean the customs and garda officers time could be better spent.

http://news.eircom.net/breakingnews/21218407/?view=Standard

Do you have link to the Dail report. €600m seems very high, would like to see how they arrived at that figure.

antoobrien

Godge wrote: »

Do you have link to the Dail report. €600m seems very high, would like to see how they arrived at that figure.

http://www.oireachtas.ie/parliament/media/committees/transportandcommunications/JCTC-Report-on-the-Road-Haulage-Industry-in-Ireland-(Published-25.10.12).pdf

From reading the report it's not a cost as in cost of putting die in, rather a loss to the excehquer.

The Deputy‘s first question related to the figure of €600 million. At present, some 1.25 billion litres of fuel are being dyed by the State each year. This results in a loss of revenue - between white and green diesel - of €600 million. That is what the State is giving away without any checks or balances being in place.

hmmm

FFS of course we don't spend 600 million a year on green dye, the 600 million is the effective subsidy being given to green diesel users. From my reading, "Social Justice Ireland" want to decrease that subsidy by 500 million.

sparksfly

Why cant all commercial vehicles used solely for business purposes (like hauliers) be treated the same, why do farmers again get a special deal?

hfallada

sparksfly wrote: »

Why cant all commercial vehicles used solely for business purposes (like hauliers) be treated the same, why do farmers again get a special deal?

Are you actually for real? Farmers in Ireland seriously struggle to make ends meet on their farms. They use diesel for tractors and other machinery which are both use a lot of diesel. They simplyly could not afford to buy diesel at market prices. You have question how much of the Irish diesel ends up in NI. A lot of Irish petrol stations on the border sell agricultural diesel from pumps, some of which most likely ends up in the cars from NI.

If the government wants to raise money they should do more to stop the washing of the diesel(removing the dye) to sell it at a higher price. They should make people aware if you fill up your car with diesel and the engine is knocking there is a stop possibility that the diesel is washed. Some many people on boards have had there engine knocking and then sizing as washed diesel has no lubricates. The government should encourage people to report to identify which petrol stations sell dodgy fuel

meathstevie

sparksfly wrote: »

Why cant all commercial vehicles used solely for business purposes (like hauliers) be treated the same, why do farmers again get a special deal?

Because diesel is used to power a lot of self propelled agricultural machinery that are vehicles only by virtue of the fact that they can get from A to B under their own power but have no transport function beside that. It doesn't allow a farmer to use green or red diesel in his car or 4x4.

Deise Vu

I do some work in the haulage industry and I have been screaming this from the rooftops for years. I rarely find myself agreeing with anything Fr Sean Healy has to say but I think he is understating the loss to the exchequer here. In the first place a huge proportion of the green diesel is being used illegally by hauliers (who cannot legally use it despite what the article seems to imply) and by farmers and other individuals who have access to green diesel. Then factor in the vast quantities purchased to be laundered and the direct and social costs that follow from this criminal activity. Is it a good idea to be subsidising terrorism and criminal gangs? What about the pollution, Garda and Customs time not to mention administration costs and the bloody cost of dyeing the stuff.

Farmers are well able to farm subsidies. It shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a compensation scheme for them. There is absolutely no other argument for continuing to do what we do and there are dozens of compelling arguments against.

Godge

If the figures are correct, this is a no-brainer.

Excise duty in 2012 took in €4.6 bn, about half of which was alcohol and tobacco, the rest on fuel.

So €2.3 bn on fuel excise duty. This includes coal, oil, gas, petrol and diesel. Now, I have no breakdown on how much of that is diesel.

Nevertheless if €600m is allegedly lost every year in VAT and excise duty from subsidised diesel, this must mean that a very large proportion of the diesel used in this country is not covered by the excise duty regime. There is no way the agricultural industry uses that much.

murphaph

hfallada wrote: »

Are you actually for real? Farmers in Ireland seriously struggle to make ends meet on their farms

That's mainly because Irish farms are still too small to compete effectively. Irish farming needs more consolidation. Fewer, bigger farms are more efficient to run than more smaller ones. It's something that is slowly changing in Ireland, but the various subsidies have slowed that process artificially.

Cody Pomeray

As long as there is a Common Agricultural Policy or as long as the French people persist at nationhood, small Irish farms will be a fact of life.

I don't know if there are more efficient ways of lowering fuel costs for agricultural production, but green diesel does seem open to a lot of abuse.

ted1

As a rule I ignore anything Social groups say, becuase they are always ill informed, and only have one agenda.

They are trialing alternatives to dye, such a DNA markings this will make the whole process cheaper, and the boys in Louth will find it near impossible to remove the DNA markings.

n97 mini

hfallada wrote: »

Are you actually for real? Farmers in Ireland seriously struggle to make ends meet on their farms.

A lot of publicans seriously struggle to make ends meet in their pubs. Should they be given subsidies too, or should they be just left to survive on the open market?

Godge

n97 mini wrote: »

A lot of publicans seriously struggle to make ends meet in their pubs. Should they be given subsidies too, or should they be just left to survive on the open market?

That is exactly what the publicans are looking for. They have persuaded some TDs and Ministers that there should be minimum prices for alcohol which would push up the price of alcohol in supermarkets and off-licences and make pubs more competitive by default but not by them lowering their prices.

pmct

n97 mini wrote: »

A lot of publicans seriously struggle to make ends meet in their pubs. Should they be given subsidies too, or should they be just left to survive on the open market?[/QUOTE

As a farmer I agree unfortunately if that was done then the food inflation that we are seeing at the moment would get a lot worse is the true cost of production we passed onto the consumer

antoobrien

Deise Vu wrote: »

In the first place a huge proportion of the green diesel is being used illegally by hauliers (who cannot legally use it despite what the article seems to imply) and by farmers and other individuals who have access to green diesel.

I think you've got that backwards, hauliers have to use green diesel - it's the diesel that's "marked" for road use. Red diesel is supposed to be agricultural use only.

Godge wrote: »

If the figures are correct, this is a no-brainer.

Excise duty in 2012 took in €4.6 bn, about half of which was alcohol and tobacco, the rest on fuel.

So €2.3 bn on fuel excise duty. This includes coal, oil, gas, petrol and diesel. Now, I have no breakdown on how much of that is diesel.

The figures are available on the revenue website. The diesel receipts came to €1.1bn in 2011, petrol receipts came to about €990m.

murphaph

antoobrien wrote: »

I think you've got that backwards, hauliers have to use green diesel - it's the diesel that's "marked" for road use. Red diesel is supposed to be agricultural use only.

Road legal diesel might have a green tint to some but it's not "green diesel". "Green diesel" is marked white diesel for off road use. In NI (and the rest of the UK) they use a red dye to mark their diesel (similar to what Kerosene looks like in the south).

Godge

antoobrien wrote: »

The figures are available on the revenue website. The diesel receipts came to €1.1bn in 2011, petrol receipts came to about €990m.

Thanks for finding that. If revenue loss is €600m, then that means that over a third of diesel usage in Ireland is for agricultural purposes.

antoobrien

Godge wrote: »

Thanks for finding that. If revenue loss is €600m, then that means that over a third of diesel usage in Ireland is for agricultural purposes.

The claimed revenue loss is partially the cost of laundered fuel, loss of retailers sales, loss of VAT & loss of excises, so I wouldn't trust it to come up with anywhere near an accurate figure for estimating usage.

If you read table EX15 from the excise doc linked earlier, they state that 2.5bn litres of diesel are "retained" for use in Ireland. The Oireachtas report states that 1.25bn litres are dyed, so it appears the agri use of diesel (including laundering) is closer to half the diesel used in the state.

ardmacha

The purpose of duty on diesel is to discourage oil use, this should be as true for someone driving around a field as driving on the road. If farmers had to pay full whack they would be incentivised to get more efficient tractors etc. The tax raised should be added back into general agricultural support.

Tipp Man

ardmacha wrote: »

The purpose of duty on diesel is to discourage oil use, this should be as true for someone driving around a field as driving on the road. If farmers had to pay full whack they would be incentivised to get more efficient tractors etc. The tax raised should be added back into general agricultural support.

What??!!

Fuel duty has nothing to do with discouraging oil use, it's all about revenue generation for governments the world over

Farmer Pudsey

Green diesel is not just used in the agriculture sector it is also used in the Fishing industry, construction industry and across other industries to power generators etc.

There is reluctance by the government to bring in a rebate system however it may be a more cost effective option than the present system. The reason for this even if industries that get a rebate do manage to use the system and over claim rebate at least this money remains in the normal economy and not in the black economy.

My own opinion is that the actual cost of fuel laundering is much higher than is taught as the profit is made from it remains in the black economy and alot of inviduals involved have criminal backgrounds and use profits for other illegal activity.

wolfpawnat

n97 mini wrote: »

A lot of publicans seriously struggle to make ends meet in their pubs. Should they be given subsidies too, or should they be just left to survive on the open market?

Only we NEED farmers to increase our exports in general, without them, we would plummet further into recession. That said, publicans and other small businesses need help too.

MOC88

Ha I wouldn't trust the Government to implement anything but an election campaign. They'd make a complete hash of it, give it to the most incompetent company and when it didn't work but cost 10s of milllions they'd just shrug and laugh it off.

However the idea is definitely a good one and makes a lot more logical than the system we use now

n97 mini

wolfpawnat wrote: »

Only we NEED farmers to increase our exports in general, without them, we would plummet further into recession. That said, publicans and other small businesses need help too.

When subsiding any sector, the subsidy involves sourcing money from somewhere else. You also risk creating a dependency on this "help".

The best way to help your local publican is by going to the pub. Not by taking money from someone else.

Joe 90

Farmer Pudsey wrote: »

Green diesel is not just used in the agriculture sector it is also used in the Fishing industry, construction industry and across other industries to power generators etc.

There is reluctance by the government to bring in a rebate system however it may be a more cost effective option than the present system. The reason for this even if industries that get a rebate do manage to use the system and over claim rebate at least this money remains in the normal economy and not in the black economy.

My own opinion is that the actual cost of fuel laundering is much higher than is taught as the profit is made from it remains in the black economy and alot of inviduals involved have criminal backgrounds and use profits for other illegal activity.

Farmer, I reckon that you talk a lot of sense a lot of the time but then you start to perpetuate the myth that someone partakes of some form of illegal activity in order to finance another form.

I don't thing that a rational criminal would indulge in the first form unless it were profitable in it's own right.

We re talking about criminals living in a real Darwinian world, not civil servants.:)

Farmer Pudsey

Joe 90 wrote: »

Farmer, I reckon that you talk a lot of sense a lot of the time but then you start to perpetuate the myth that someone partakes of some form of illegal activity in order to finance another form.

I don't thing that a rational criminal would indulge in the first form unless it were profitable in it's own right.

We re talking about criminals living in a real Darwinian world, not civil servants.:)

Yes any person involved in any business legal or illegal will tend to try to move towards the most profitable. However most will also disversify but in the case of illegal operations they have an issue with legitimising the money. Some they will spend as cash some they will reinvest. There reinvestment will tend to be in either expanding there present operation or going into another venture.

Fuel smugglers/laundry's will have moved from that to smuggling other products such as cigerettes and move from that to drugs etc. By removing one cash relatively low risk operation you put pressure on other operations.

On top of that if you leave it the normal economy any avoidance/evasion will benefit that economy.

sparksfly

hfallada wrote: »

Are you actually for real? Farmers in Ireland seriously struggle to make ends meet on their farms. They use diesel for tractors and other machinery which are both use a lot of diesel. l

Are you for real. Hauliers seriously struggle and are going out of business without any of the myriad of handouts that farmers get from the taxpayer.
Do they not use a huge amount of diesel?

As for subsidies reducing the cost of food, crap. The way to reduce costs is to become more efficient, not beg for more handouts.

nice_guy80

If you lived down the country you would realise a lot of people don't put normal diesel into their cars.

there are no checkpoints.
6 years driving to work and elsewhere and I've encountered a checkpoint once. ONCE!

The Gov. should stop putting the dye in and just sell fuel as is. Give a rebate to businesses that need it 0 farming, haulage, buses