Some operators of independent filling stations throughout the country have spoken of the losses they are currently experiencing selling petrol and diesel.
Mary Burke, owner of Morris Oil, outside Cashel in Co Tipperary said they are running a small operation with small tanks and get fuel deliveries three times a week.
Burke said she has never seen fuel price rises so bad “for as long as I’ve had a filling station”.
“We often didn’t change the price of petrol and diesel for maybe a month, two months at a time and we’re up and down off the ladder two or three times a week now changing the price,” she said. “At the moment we’re not making money on petrol and diesel. We’re actually selling it at a loss. I’m relying on someone to come in and buy something very small conveniently to bring up my margin.
“[For someone] just to come in and buy petrol and diesel, I’m actually suffering a huge loss. If we sold it at what we were being charged, our shop wouldn’t be any way busy. We would be on our knees by now.”
Burke added she was covering the costs of six full-time staff members and can’t sustain “selling petrol and diesel at a loss all the time”.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Miller, of Jaybees bakery and petrol station, on the Dunmore East Road in Co Waterford, said they did run a loss on fuel at one point and now are “not making much off it at all; the margins are miniscule”.
Mary Burke’s filling station just outside Cashel in Co Tipperary has been forced to sell fuel at a loss as costs have spiralled. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd
“It is the sort of item of sale that draws customers in and hopefully they’ll fill up their car with fuel, smell the wonderful baked goods and come in and help themselves to some cakes and that sort of thing, which is where we can make a bit more money,” he said.
“The profit margin we need off of petrol and diesel is just not there.”
Miller added while they were seeing “good effects” from the Government’s decision to drop excise duty on a litre of diesel by 20 cent and 15 cent for petrol until the end of May, it would “take a long time to settle back down to previous prices”.
One filling station owner says fuel price rises have never been so bad ‘for as long as I’ve had a filling station’