Mr Pat O'Donovan is the managing director of O'Donovan Transport in Cork. The third generation of his family to be involved in the business, which runs over 30 trucks, he says the haulage industry has been affected by increasing fuel costs for quite some time.

"The impact is not just this week. It has been happening on an ongoing basis," he says. "Fuel is like a currency. It affects everything and has a knock-on effect.

"For example, if fuel goes up, my drivers' wages have to go up, because the cost of living is going up."

As the haulage industry is so competitive - some 80 per cent of drivers here own their own trucks, according to the IRHA - many individuals have tried to absorb the increased costs associated with fuel price rises.

"If fuel prices went up three or four times a year five years ago, everybody talked about it," Mr O'Donovan says.

"But in the past year, they have been changing twice monthly."

This means he no longer sends his trucks out looking for "spot" work on days when they are not already booked. The overheads are just too high.

"Fuel would have been between 28 per cent and 30 per cent of our running costs five years ago.

"Now it's closer to 45 or 50 per cent of operating costs," he says.

"Some will leave the industry if this continues, but that will not solve the problem. What I am worried about is that we have been subsidising industry for too long by absorbing these costs."