Running on empty

Life After Oil: Ireland has been allowed to develop in a way that sends people into their cars when they should be getting out of them, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor

Cars and trucks, roads and motorways, traffic congestion and suburban sprawl: Ireland is more like North America than northern Europe. And with the Government spending €30 million a week on motorways and other major road schemes, we are being locked into a US-style reliance on imported oil.

Oil accounts for more than 57 per cent of our overall energy consumption, significantly higher than the EU average. Figures also show that for every 1 per cent rise in economic growth in Ireland, oil use goes up by 2 per cent - mainly due to the steep rise in car numbers, particularly over the past 10 years.

Ireland is already among the most car-dependent countries in the world, according to a report published in 2000 (Transport Investment and Economic Development, by David Banister and Joseph Berechman, University College London Press). Figures showed that the average car here is driven 24,400km per year, a distance that is 70 per cent higher than France or Germany, 50 per cent higher than Britain and 30 per cent higher than the US. These statistics reflect our dispersed settlement pattern and the huge growth in long-distance commuting. The number of people driving to work jumped 16 points to 55 per cent between 1991 and 2002, while the average length of commutes increased by nearly 50 per cent, from 11km in 1996 to nearly 16km in 2002.

Over the past 10 years, Dublin has been allowed to sprawl all over Leinster, with suburban estates springing up on the outskirts of villages and towns within an 80-100km radius. And the Government didn't lift a finger to halt this unsustainable sprawl or to ensure a steady supply of affordable housing in the capital.

Local councillors were allowed to get on with rezoning vast tracts of land for commuter housing in places such as Gorey, Co Wexford, nearly 100km from Dublin. While this was under way, Martin Cullen - then minister for the environment - declined to use the powers available to him under the 2000 Planning Act to rescind the local plan.

Last October, after a sod-turning ceremony for the N11 Gorey bypass, Cullen - now wearing his hat as Minister for Transport - hailed it as one of the fastest-growing towns in the south-east. "The demographic change which Gorey has undergone has been immense. We in Government must respond to this change," he said.

In effect, he was conceding that there had been a failure of political leadership. Although Taoiseach Bertie Ahern once identified sustainable development as "fundamental" to his vision of Ireland, neither he nor his Government did anything to make it a reality on the ground. Instead, we got rampant unsustainable development.

Houses on the outskirts of Carlow, Gorey, Mullingar, Portlaoise and other towns in Leinster might have seemed like bargains compared with the stupendously high property prices in the capital. But the Dubliners who bought them must now fork out a rising portion of their disposable income to pay for petrol or diesel to keep cars on the road.

So, too, must those who bought sites and built houses in rural areas, remote from essential services such as shops and schools. Yet this equally unsustainable trend of suburbanising the countryside has been promoted by the Government's so-called "Sustainable Rural Housing" guidelines, despite its inherent car-dependency.

It's not just Dublin that has acquired a long-distance commuter belt. A similar pattern of development, perhaps quite not so far-flung, can be seen within the extended catchment areas of Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford, Sligo and other centres of employment; this accounts for the long tail-backs of traffic on their approach roads.

Because of the lack of clear planning policies to consolidate Ireland's cities, towns and villages, motorways have become the sinews of sprawl, encouraging the creation of new "suburbs" that are more low-density and car-dependent than anything previously built. Cars are needed to get around, especially in the countryside. The number of cars went up by more than two-thirds from 939,022 in 1994 to 1,582,833 in 2004, reflecting the relative level of prosperity. Over the same period, the number of trucks and commercial vehicles nearly doubled from 135,809 to 268,082, as more and more goods are being transported by road to serve the booming economy.

The market share for rail freight has fallen from 5 per cent in the late 1980s to less than 1 per cent today. Indeed, the consultants who carried out the 2003 Strategic Rail Review warned that the business was "at risk of irreversible decline if the current policy vacuum continues". Three years on, policy is as vacuous as ever.

Consultants Booz Allen Hamilton calculated that a rail freight meltdown would cost Irish society €63 million a year - €27 million in extra road maintenance and €36 million as a result of pollution and accidents. Yet the Government has no plans to introduce any scheme of incentives or allowances to encourage more use of the railways for freight.

Other EU member-states such as Britain, Denmark and Sweden are pressing companies to consider rail, or at least keep the option open. The reason is simple: their governments realise that the higher costs of energy, labour and environmental compliance will make it cheaper to rail freight across Europe rather than sending it by road.

Because of our reliance on roads for freight, as well as the explosion in car numbers and air travel, Ireland's transport sector accounts for 40 per cent of total energy consumption. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from transport are increasing by up to 10 per cent per year, seriously jeopardising the prospect of meeting our Kyoto target.

Successive budgets have failed to tweak Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT) to reflect energy consumption or CO2 emissions. VRT is crudely based on engine size, with cars of up to 1,400cc charged at 22.5 per cent of the retail price, 1,401-1,900cc at 25 per cent and 1,901cc-plus (which would include all SUVs) at 30 per cent. This regime has persisted despite a commitment in the National Climate Change Strategy, published in 2000, that there would be a "rebalancing" of VRT to favour more fuel-efficient cars. Other proposals included fuel economy labelling for all new cars and the possibility of raising fuel taxes still further to cut consumption. The only changes made were a 50 per cent reduction in VRT on hybrid electric cars (such as the Toyota Prius), introduced in 2000 and due to expire at the end of this year, and a similar level of relief on the purchase of "flexible fuel vehicles" running on bio-fuels, which was introduced last December for a trial two-year period.

The case for imposing a punitive level of VRT on SUVs is overwhelming. These diesel-draining monsters, which account for 8 per cent of new car sales in Ireland, are not only extremely inefficient in terms of fuel consumption, but also belch out much more CO2 than ordinary cars. A 50 per cent rate of VRT would be more than justified. Even without the proliferation of SUVs, transport's reliance on oil will be the hardest to fix of any sector - at least until a new motor fuel becomes commercial viable and widely available. In the meantime, people will have to adapt to rising oil prices by driving cars less often, living closer to where they work and taking fewer trips by air.