The Green Party says it wants extra charges imposed on sports utility vehicles (SUVs) coming into Dublin city centre as part of any congestion charging system similar to central London.
Responding to the news that sales of 4x4 SUVs are up by 35 per cent in Ireland this year, with one-third of the sales registered in Dublin, the Green Party spokesman on transport, Mr Eamon Ryan, said his party stood alongside their colleagues in Paris and London who hoped to curb the number of SUVs in their cities.
In Paris, the city council recently passed a resolution which could see 4x4s banned from the city during peak pollution periods and their owners denied parking permits.
In London there have been calls made for double congestion charges on SUVs entering the city.
Mr Ryan said that despite the prohibitive price of SUVs, their much higher than average fuel consumption and the threat they posed to other road users, common sense had not prevailed. "They just don't make sense," he said.
As part of an anti-congestion system, extra charges should be charged on SUVs and similar high fuel consumption cars, he said. This needed to be done in conjunction with a substantial investment in infrastructure.
A change in VRT rules could also be used to tackle the SUV problem, according to Mr Ryan.
Earlier this summer, the Environment Protection Agency said pollution from rapidly increasing traffic was now "the primary threat to the quality of air in Ireland" and to prospects of meeting our commitment to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.