Fuel price reaction: ‘We will just have to pass it on to the customers’

Motorists at the Circle K fuel station at Little Bray on the Dublin/Wicklow border were remarkably stoic about the soaring cost of petrol and diesel.

Ian Currums, owner of Aztec Scaffolding, said the company had three vans and three trucks on the road and his weekly fuel bill had risen from €800 per week to “€1,200 to €1,400”. He usually fills the tanks once a week.

Has he asked his staff to drive less as a result?

“Well you can’t, can you?” he says. “They have to go to where the work is. You can’t tell them stay at home.”

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So, is there anything that he can do?

“No. We will just have to add it to the cost. We will just have to pass it on to the customers, everyone will. It will fuel inflation, but what can you do?”

Jack O’Neill said he could not remember how much it cost to fill his family saloon car, as he could not remember ever doing so.

The Bray resident said he seldom needs to drive very far, and is not unduly troubled by the rising petrol prices. He said that while nobody wanted to pay more for fuel, he did not think most people minded too much “given what is happening in Ukraine, what is causing it”.

Orla, who did not wish to provide a surname, said that when she bought her car first she could fill it for €50 and get 1,000km of range for that.

“He filled a Ford Focus yesterday,” she said, nodding towards the passenger in her car. “It is a Ford Focus 1.4L and it cost him €86.”

She said she was only putting €10 in the car “until we see how it goes”.

Brian Duffy said Government efforts to reduce excise duty to try to bring down petrol and diesel prices “only brings us back a day” in price increase terms.

“The last time I looked everybody was getting excited about diesel being €2 a litre,” he said, looking up at the fourcourt price sign which had since passed that milestone.

Mary Kenny said she too was “sanguine” about the price increase.

“It is a lot, but when you think of why it is happening, it puts it in perspective,” she said.

Would she be driving less as a consequence?

“Oh no, because I only use the car for things I need it for. I wouldn’t use it when I am going out. I’m picking the young fella up from school now, I couldn’t let him walk in that [rainy weather].”