The property boom is over, apparently. At the same time, demand for cars - and therefore petrol - is higher than ever, writes Kilian Doyle
So could someone please explain to me why the country's petrol stations are shutting quicker than bible shops in Baghdad so their sites can be flogged to property developers?
Don't the developers know the boom is over? Maybe they should be warned before they go spending their hard-earned cash speculating on station sites of the potential mistake they are making? I think we owe them that, the poor lambs. It's a precarious financial existence they live. One day it's Bentleys and Boeings, next day, boom, they are relegated to Maseratis and Cessnas. The ignominy.
Fact is, we all should be grateful to them for driving the economy. If they hadn't paid all those taxes on the profits they got from building 14,000 houses in a field in Carlow, the Government wouldn't have the money to build all those wonderful schools and services for the occupants of said palatial abodes. (Has anyone got a napkin handy? The cynicism is dribbling onto my sackcloth waistcoat and down into my hair shirt.)
Back to matters at hand. The dearth of petrol stations is becoming acute. You can drive around for hours, staring terrified at your needle hovering precariously in the red before you find one. Take the leafy suburb where my parents live. There used to be four petrol stations within a mile of their house. Now there is one. With a for sale sign adorning its fading facade. They are floundering in what has been dubbed a petrol station desert.
According to the Irish Petroleum Industry Association, 80 stations around the country closed last year. And 200 shut up shop the year before. There are now around 1,200 stations left to cater for Ireland's cars, half the number there were a decade ago.
(It's not all bad news - presumably it means the end of those one-pump oddities manned by in-bred halfwits in Bon Jovi T-shirts that you wouldn't entrust a bag of crisps to, never mind your car. You remember the type - he'd fill your tank up with milk and wash your windscreen with a dead crow. No loss there. Only problem is he's now making your burgers.)
There are predictions of a petrol shortage this summer as demand increases, supplies wane and more stations close. Add to that the fact that motorists are spending more and more time burning fuel just treading water in stagnant traffic pools, and we've a potential crisis on our hands.
I can see it now - parched motorists crawling around the petrol station desert, vultures circling overhead, desperately seeking that life-giving juice. Inevitably, there will be casualties. The thirstiest vehicles will stutter and splutter to a halt as supplies run out. The hard shoulders of the M50 will be littered with the rusting hulks of abandoned SUVs, their owners forced from their vehicles on foot in search of safety.
Of course, there is an upside. These very SUVs could then be used as conveniences for other motorists caught short in traffic. Which, you'll agree, would be a fitting end for them.
If you're in the market for a quick buck, I'd start hoovering up shares in the first company to develop a one-size fits all extra capacity fuel tank. Either that, or start filling empty mineral bottles with fuel and walking through traffic flogging emergency fuel rations like newspaper hawkers. "Peterrol or deeezelll, get yisser peterorel or deeeezelll . . . "
The bottles, of course, could serve a dual purpose. After they are emptied into petrol tanks, they could then be filled with the contents of the trapped drivers' internal tanks if they are too shy to use the SUVs. Once you'd sold all your bottles, you could charge your clients again to take the refilled ones away. Genius.
I think of everything, me. Why I'm not spending my days rolling around on a bed of freshly printed €500 notes in a field full of vintage supercars on my own private desert island is a constant source of bemusement to me. And to you too, I imagine.