Car sales are down 65 per cent, the economy is struggling, and more cars than ever are being imported , but local specialist car dealers Cunningham Higgins say that the Green Party are to blame for at least 50 per cent of this fall..
Niall Cunningham says it’s not just the impact of the economy, but there are a number of factors and one of them is the new emissions based tax system introduced by the Green Party.
Mr Cunningham, director of the specialist car dealership says the Green Party has been totally irresponsible, playing a dangerous political game that’s damaging the car industry.
“When the Greens made a change to the VRT system last June, they put together a system they thought would be revenue neutral, that would penalise more polluting cars, and pass the savings onto less polluting cars,” said Mr Cunningham.
“However they never thought they would see the tax on a €60,000 car being reduced to €156. It makes no sense that car owners previously paying around €600 a year on tax are now paying around €200 a year, and many of them would have been happy to continue paying the old taxes. The problem now is that some smaller cars have increased from around €200 a year to around €600 a year.
“Due to low mileage and smaller engines most of these cars will probably have lower emissions than bigger cars.” As a result of the changes a two-tier tax system is now in place. This has resulted in cars bought before early 2008 following the old tax system, and newer cars following a different system.
““The biggest problem now is that there is no balance between the old and new system. A person who bought a new car in 2007 or early 2008 is in negative equity, they cannot buy a new car as they could have lost more than €10,000 off the value of their car,” he said.
“A BMW 320D that would have costed €50,000 to buy new in 2007 should now be worth €30,000, but is only worth €20,000, at the same time the price of a new BMW 320D has fallen from €50,000 to €40,000. Dealers are taking trade-ins but cannot re-sell them, some cars will sit in the yard for up to a year before being resold. The new system makes no sense for people wanting to buy new cars, and none for the dealers selling them.”
The system built on the Green party’s vision for lower emissions was unecessary according to the dealership director. “Ireland will never make a contribution to damaging the ozone, if we stopped driving for 100 years we wouldn’t add one year onto the lifespan of the country not to mention the world. The Government didn’t need to change the tax system as a European directive on emissions would have caused a natural decline. This directive indicated that car maufacturers must reduce the average carbon emissions across their range to a certain level. As a result sales are down 65 per cent and emissions are only down 11per cent, if the system was working the figures should match up.
“During the times we are facing we cannot afford to be worrying about the environment, it’s not even about profit margins at the moment we’re losing money off every second car we sell. The government need to do something, we have the highest fall in sales than anywhere else in Europe. The Greens wouldn’t introduce a scrappage scheme and despite the recession when Germany introduced one they saw an 11 per cent increase in sales.”
According to Mr Cunnigham the result of the Green Party’s decision on tax will lose the Government one billion euro this year, with local authorities also being down at least 25 per cent on road tax. He says the only way to solve the problem is “if the Greens redistribute the VRT bands, and create a common platform for road tax across the board. This will only be sucessful if politics cease, and the Government work with all the shareholders involved”.
