\u201cA cap has been tried out in many countries and, again, you have to always look at the evidence here,\u201d Peter Burke said, speaking on RT\u00c9 Radio.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at where the cap was tried out. In Argentina, in Egypt, in Pakistan, one common thread happened after it. The IMF were called in to each of those countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a cap will do is take a wrecking ball to our public finances. It will put the bill on the taxpayers, take it from the forecourt and put it on to our debt, on the back of every citizen in our country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not be able to sustain it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pressed that other EU countries have introduced fuel price caps and IMF bailouts were not required, Mr Burke said it was still early.<\/p>\n
He said in Slovenia, where caps are being introduced, there is now \u201ctourism\u201d, with people travelling from other countries to get cheaper fuel.<\/p>\n
Mr Burke said a cap would impact small businesses, adding that payments would be made in arrears, leaving smaller forecourts facing razor-thin margins.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of them [forecourts] are operating on a margin of two, three, four per cent. That means all of those will go out of business immediately,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The minister said Ireland did not want to see its \u201csovereignty handed over to the IMF\u201d like it did after the bailout more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n
Pressed that it was an extreme scenario he was setting out, Mr Burke said the cost of fuel caps would run into the billions of euro.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo State could sustain that into the future,\u201d Mr Burke said.<\/p>\n
On a package of measures, Mr Burke said the Government has sought EU flexibility on excise duties, due to restrictions in the existing framework.<\/p>\n
He said the Government would need to get EU permission to further cut excise on petrol, diesel and green diesel.<\/p>\n
He added that T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris is working on the matter at an EU level.<\/p>\n
Mr Burke said he hoped there would be news later on \u201can intervention that will reduce inflation\u201d and help lower the cost of groceries on supermarket shelves.<\/p>\n
This package would also seek to underwrite \u201cthe logistics of getting them to the shelves\u201d, focusing on both hauliers and farmers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cA cap has been tried out in many countries and, again, you have to always look at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[943,63615,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-391531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-cost-of-living","9":"tag-fuel-prices","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}