HEADTOHEAD:
YES says
CIARÁN CUFFE, who argues that Ireland's commuting patterns are not sustainable and the levy is one of a range of measures that will help reduce congestion and cut carbon emissions.
Nosays
CONOR FAUGHNAN, who states the levy is so poorly thought through that it will be a nightmare to administer and will not achieve its stated aim of reducing car use.
YES - Ciarán Cuffe
I EXPECT to pay €200 for the privilege of a parking space in the grounds of Leinster House next year. It is a reasonable price to pay, given that renting a space privately can cost thousands. The parking levy introduced in the Finance Bill last week will ensure that workers who have a parking space provided for free by their employer make some contribution to the State's finances.
Many civil servants and private-sector workers will pay this levy, but some will decide to switch from the car to public transport, or walk or cycle to work.
The purpose of this initiative is not simply to tax commuters who drive but is one of a range of measures that the Government is taking to promote alternative modes of transport to the private car in cities.
Simply put, our current commuting patterns are not sustainable. Our city centres are congested with traffic; energy prices are on the rise and greenhouse gas emissions from transport are dangerously high. We need to change our habits to develop sustainable transport practices and the car parking levy is one strand of this strategy.
Private car ownership skyrocketed in the last 15 years as the economy grew. This led to gridlock in city centres and has caused massive congestion for commuters. Streets where children once played have become rat-runs for speeding car drivers.
In a recent international survey comparing how long it takes to transport goods across a city, Dublin was placed second from the bottom at 57 minutes, just ahead of Calcutta.
A report to Dublin City Council last month recommended that we should exclude private cars from Dublin city centre to avoid permanent gridlock. Fiscal measures to discourage unnecessary private car travel will have to be taken if we are to unclog our streets. The economic downturn has seen a sharp decline in the price of oil and the price at the petrol pumps has fallen since the June highs. But these are temporary respites. As the International Energy Agency has recently reiterated, the era of cheap oil is over.
We are over 90 per cent dependent on foreign oil and can expect continual increases in energy prices in the medium to long term as we move toward peak oil and beyond.
The sooner we adapt our commuting patterns to rising fuel costs, the better placed we'll be in the low-carbon economy of the future. We also have to look at the direct impact of car travel on the environment. Carbon dioxide emissions from the transport sector have gone up 165 per cent since 1990, in line with the number of private cars on our roads, and represent 20 per cent of our total greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing these emissions is important, and not just from the point of view of saving the planet. Our failure to meet Kyoto targets will result in the taxpayer having to pay for carbon credits. The less we emit, the less we pay.
The Government's approach to sustainable travel is not all stick, no carrot, however. The Budget will also introduce a scheme encouraging cycling to work, that will enable employees to avail of tax relief when purchasing a bicycle and safety equipment. The similar tax relief that applies to the annual bus and rail commuter ticket in Dublin, where you can save up to €550 a year, is one of the best deals going. Other measures will be announced in the forthcoming Sustainable Travel and Transport Action Plan being finalised by the Minister for Transport.
This levy is being brought in against the backdrop of significant investment in public transport under the Transport 21 programme that will increase the alternatives to the car: €50 million is being invested in delivering 160 new Bus Éireann buses around the country, in cities such as Galway, Limerick and Waterford. In Dublin, we have seen the benefit of the Luas as well as the introduction of quality bus corridors that have improved bus journey times by 40 per cent.
In Cork, €34 million has been spent on the development of green route bus corridors and park-and-ride facilities. There are many commuters in urban areas that do not have an employer-provided parking space and this is a proportionate levy on a privileged perk for those that do. It will help to ease congestion and get us on the path to tackling emissions.
A decade ago, detractors warned that traffic would grind to a halt when one of Dublin's first quality bus corridors opened on the Stillorgan road. Today that bus lane carries thousands of bus commuters to and from work. Bans on smoky coal, smoking in pubs as well as the plastic bag levy were also criticised as unworkable, and yet have provided a cleaner environment. The parking levy will also play its part.
On reflection, maybe I won't pay the levy. I rarely use the car for commuting and normally I'm on the bike or public transport. Perhaps I'll leave the car at home, save €200 and do my bit for the environment.
Ciarán Cuffe is the Green Party's transport spokesman and TD for Dún Laoghaire.
NO - Conor Faughnan
THERE IS the world of a difference between a measure that seems like a good idea in a pre-Budget brainstorming session and a properly thought out policy that will actually achieve worthwhile objectives.
As Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan and his officials are finding out, the proposed workplace parking levy falls firmly into the category of "what on earth were we thinking".
It must have sounded like a good idea when it found its way onto the pre-Budget flip-chart. But the moment you pick it up and look closely at how much fuss it is going to cause, how difficult it is going to be to administer and how arbitrarily it will fall on the heads of its victims, you quickly realise that it is far more trouble than it will ever be worth. It will raise up to €10 million per annum; the eight cent per litre excise duty increase on petrol will yield 20 times that amount. In order to raise the money, we are to have a new payroll tax which will make everyone who has a parking space supplied by their employer in a city pay an additional €200.
For any proposed new tax, I think it is fair to ask both why and how we are doing this. This new levy struggles badly on both points; let's start with the why.
Purportedly, it is an environmental tax. If you have a parking space, then you should pay for it because you should be incentivised to make the socially desirable choice to get to work another way.
And we come, inevitably, to the catch-22 of the car versus public transport debate. You simply cannot get people to switch to public transport that does not exist.
The AA has made this point many times, but it is worth making again. The public transport deficit in Irish cities is astounding - yet anti-car policy makers persist in pretending that motorists have a choice when they do not.
In Dublin city centre each day, 40 per cent of commuters are in cars. Only 27 per cent use public transport, and even at that the buses and trains are stuffed full. Those figures are outlandish, and the regional figures are even worse. In every other city in Europe, the spilt is more like eight to one in favour of public transport.
This levy falls into the intellectually lazy default position that if you are hurting motorists, then you must be doing some good. Two wheels good, four wheels bad, with a plethora of carbon use and climate change non-sequitur factoids thrown in as support.
Setting aside the exaggeration that inevitably accompanies anti-car statements, everyone accepts (for congestion reasons if nothing else) that we need less car use and more public transport for commuters.
There is not the slightest chance that this proposal will contribute to bringing this about. Looking at how the tax will be implemented, it seems that we are in for a bureaucratic horror story. I spoke with baffled officials from the Department of Finance this week who just had no answer to the dozens of questions that the AA and many others will have.
One thing is certain: there is no chance of this tax being in place for January 1st.
At the moment, we cannot even agree what a city is. The department is in discussion with local authorities in Dublin, Cork, Limerick Waterford and Galway as to where the boundaries will be drawn. No one knows.
Lots of people have been told that they will be exempt or will be able to pay a reduced rate, but no one knows the details. The disabled will be exempt - a no brainer. Shift workers will have a reduced liability, as will those who share the parking space or who only use it infrequently.
What are those exemptions? How are they assessed? Who decides how to allocate liability? What if you have a mix of customer and staff parking? What if you have more spaces than staff? All of these are fair questions and to date, no one has been able to answer them.
The AA is happy to support measures that are genuinely constructive. I would give the example of the proposed tax incentive for employers who provide cycling equipment for employees. This is an entirely benign and helpful measure that is likely to encourage more people to cycle and more employers to provide for them. Terrific. Well worth a try and most importantly, victimless.
More substantively in the scheme of things, the AA also supported - indeed we practically drafted - the changes to the VRT system that favour lower emission cars.
This parking levy has no such environmental upside.
When you add cost to someone who does not have any choice, it simply becomes a dead weight tax on working. From any rational, practical or environmental point of view this is a very poor idea. Let's drop it and do something useful instead.
Conor Faughnan is public affairs manager of AA Ireland