Caught in commuter hell of mortgage and petrol costs

The rising price of fuel means that one couple's total spend on petrol for the year now equates to about four mortgage payments, writes JOANNE HUNT

IT’S AN EARLY start for Kiera Lambe and her husband Peter. Commuting from south Wicklow to Dublin each morning, a 64-mile round trip, the alarm clock goes off at 5.30am.

“We’d love to have bought near where we grew up,” says Kiera, “but we couldn’t have afforded it. The boom brought us down here.”

Dropping their four-year-old daughter Seryn to creche en route, the pair battle traffic to get to Kiera’s work in Booterstown for 8am. Peter starts work in Dún Laoghaire half an hour later.

While a house in Rathdrum when they bought in 2005 was more affordable than in the suburbs of Sallynoggin or Dalkey from where they hail, what they didn’t expect was the rising cost of fuel.

Now with no prospect of work closer to home, punitive petrol prices and an increasingly expensive mortgage to pay, this young family is just one of thousands caught in a perfect commuter belt storm.

With their second car permanently in the driveway because they can’t afford to run it, the couple’s work and family life now revolves around commuting as cheaply as possible.

“I’ve talked to my boss so that I can have roughly the same hours as my husband because of fuel,” says Kiera.

“Fuel is just taking a massive chunk out of our salaries. Even with one car, it’s becoming frightening to see how much money we put in every week.”

Filling the tank at least once a week – “and that’s just for getting to and from work, there are no deviations from our route,” says Kiera – the couple is spending up to €350 a month at the pumps. In fact, the Lambes’ total spend on petrol for the year now equates to about four mortgage payments.

And with census figures revealing an ever-widening commuter belt encircling Dublin, comprising many driven out by boom prices, the Lambes are not alone.

Laois has the fastest-growing population of any county, more than twice the growth rate for the country as a whole.

The population of the commuter lands of both Cavan and Fingal is up 14 per cent and those in Longford and Meath is up 13 per cent.

AA Ireland’s director of policy, Conor Faughnan, says feedback from the association’s regular motorist surveys reveals the heavy cost to commuting mortgage holders.

“Motorists have told us they are in negative equity in a house 40 miles from Dublin and commute to work in order to pay an onerous mortgage . . . some have actually quit a job because it wasn’t adding up,” says Faughnan.

“You might have bought a house in 2007 or 2008 and your budget looked sound at the time, but in January 2009, if you were paying €142 a month for petrol, now you are paying €300. It’s crucifying people.

The rapid rise in the price of fuel has been a relatively recent phenomenon, he says. After summer highs in 2008, in January 2009, we were paying just 95 cent a litre for petrol. Last month that had crept up to an average of €1.62.

While the weak euro and increasing oil prices have been outside our control, Government fuel taxes have not,” says Faughnan.

“The Irish Government has been lumping loads and loads of extra tax onto fuel and that is something we can control. The tax is the reason our retail prices for fuel are higher than ever before.”

Citing the example of an average motorist who spends €249 a month on petrol, he says 60 per cent of that is tax.

“That individual is going to spend just a whisker less than €3,000 in a year on fuel and about €1,600 of that is tax. That goes straight to the exchequer.

“When you think that people are spitting feathers in anger about the household charge, the typical motorist will spend 16 times that amount on fuel tax every year.”

The cost of getting to work from the commuter counties is also dramatically changing purchasing behaviour, says Faughnan.

“Very few people are buying new cars, but 90 per cent of those who do now buy a diesel car. It would have been the other way around 10 years ago.”

Some 90 per cent of cars purchased are now also in the cheaper A and B tax bands. The reality for many struggling homeowners, however, is that the capital investment in a car that is cheaper to run is just beyond them. He says it’s more likely they will make cuts elsewhere.

“For those who keep driving because they have to, the rising cost of fuel is having the same effect as a pay cut,” says Faughnan.

“It means that they are putting off journeys and cancelling the spend in their local area such as a trip to the chipper, a night out or the odd meal out.”

For the Lambes, having to combine their work schedules and commute to save money has meant compromises to family life. While they love living in Rathdrum, the commute is costing them in more ways than one.

“Seryn is up at 5.30am too and we’re dropping her to creche at 7am as soon as it opens,” says Kiera. “I feel bad because it’s not much quality of life for her. She’s having to go to bed earlier and she’s having to get up earlier.

“She’s starting school in September and I don’t know how that’s going to be. I really feel sorry for her because she is going to be tired in school as well.”

And next year, their mortgage will get more expensive too, says Kiera.

“It was becoming unaffordable, so we fixed our payments for five years. That runs out next year and I don’t know what’s going to happen then.”