In the fuel trade for all his working life, Colin Fee, who owns and runs the Maxol filling station on the Dublin Road in Dundalk, Co Louth, stills bear emotional scars from last month’s protests over soaring fuel prices.
In the days when fuel prices from the depots were changing by the minute, Fee and his staff faced abuse behind the counter and on the forecourt from angry customers.
“This was personal. I could show you text messages I got, but I won’t show because they’re that angry and rude. We got it in the neck, and unfairly, too,” he tells The Irish Times outside his shop.
Life in the fuel trade along the Border has always been different from everywhere else on the island, where those involved have to cope with ever-changing challenges.
For the last six months, the stations on the northern side held the advantage, gaining from lower prices on fuels, but also on groceries and drink.
Colin Fee says constant increases in the cost of doing business here is biggest issue the industry faces. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd
In the wake of the Government’s excise and other changes in recent weeks, the pendulum has partly swung back: stations in the Republic are cheaper for diesel, but more expensive for petrol.
But trade lost has not been recovered, or not all of it.
“Our biggest problem is with our own Government and the amount of excise duty that they are taking. We got it in the neck over price-gouging, and that was wrong,” he says.
“But it takes €1.20 out of every €2 spent. The other 80 cent is shared between me, Maxol, Reynolds, the transport company, [forecourt retailer] Circle K, who have the loading facility in Dublin Port.
“Then, the shipping company that takes it from Rotterdam or Milford Haven, the refinery in Rotterdam, the Greek shipping magnate bringing it from the Middle East and then the sheikh.”
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Even if prices were equal on both sides, Fee and others in the business on the southern side, argue that the odds are still stacked against them.
“It’s got very hard to ply your trade in the south – very hard. There’s just constant increases in the cost of doing business. That is the biggest issue, bigger than the price any day in the North. And it’s affecting everybody,” he says.
He lists off different costs: the increase in the minimum wage, pension auto-enrolment, the extra bank holidays and then smaller costs such as the €1,000 licence for selling tobacco.
“It’s got to a point where it’s very hard,” he says.
Industry representative Kevin McPartlan, chief executive of Fuels for Ireland, says currency shifts are no longer the issue.
“It’s now about that our taxes are so much higher and our regulatory compliance costs so much greater,” he says.
Equally, tougher European Union rules surrounding the addition of bioethanol and biodiesel added to diesel to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions in the Republic drives up costs.
For Colm McKenna, who closed his Texaco filling station in Muff, Co Donegal, nearly a year ago, last month’s protests convinced him he was right to quit.
A year on, he still blames the Green Party and condemns Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for letting it “wag the dog” on environmental policy because they needed the Greens to stay in power.
He believes the peak seen in fuel prices in March will return because the US-Iran conflict will not go away soon.
“The British had their troubles in south Armagh years ago. Now, Trump has brought 50 ‘south Armaghs’ on his head and the rest of us will pay the price for it,” he says.
The number of filling stations along the Border has reduced over the years; the surviving ones depend more on non-fuel sales.
From his base in Carrickcarnon, near Ravensdale, Co Louth, Hugh Morgan has over 45 years built up Morgan Fuels business, supplying customers on both sides of the Border.
Hugh Morgan, of Morgan Fuels, says Government should have scrapped carbon tax once trouble flared in the Gulf. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd
He also runs a fuel cards business used by scores of haulage companies across Europe at nearly 7,000 filling stations in Ireland, the UK and continental Europe.
Morgan, a man of strong opinions, says the carbon tax should never have been introduced and the Government should have abandoned it at the first sign of trouble in the Gulf.
“If they had taken that step as a goodwill gesture on the first day, the protests would never have happened,” he says.
Morgan holds no truck with the environmental arguments behind carbon taxes; he doesn’t believe climate change is happening, despite the available scientific evidence proving it is.
For haulage firms along the southern side of the Border, it was never cheaper in recent times to buy commercial supplies across the Border because of the diesel rebate scheme that existed before the protests.
“Although it did come very close at one stage to being on parity, or being slightly cheaper, but it didn’t happen,” one leading industry figure says, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The increased rebate has helped since, he told The Irish Times. “Though, the first tranche of that probably only lasted days before it was wiped out,” he told The Irish Times.
So far, however, clients are paying fuel higher bills. “They’re being very good. We deal with a lot of multinationals, they’ve all been very understanding,” he says.
There are other actions the Government could take such as introducing barrier-free tolls on motorways, he says.
David Blevings, spokesman for the Irish Petrol Retailers Association, believes northern filling stations will retain an advantage, even though the price gap has narrowed or gone the other way.
“Depending how far you are from the Border, it’s still cheaper to go north and fill up because the groceries, drink, even minerals are cheaper. The North doesn’t have the bottle return charge, for example,” he says.
The northern businesses made gains because the British government’s 2022 decision to cut five pence per litre off excise after the Ukrainian conflict began was never reversed.
For now, the British action pales by comparison with the larger cuts imposed by the Government in Dublin.
Rural filling stations are more than just about fuel, says Kevin McPartlan, especially where other local services have been lost.
“It’s where the kids get their lunch, where people drop off dry-cleaning or the post office. So, if you lose a forecourt near the border, it’s about much more than losing fuel,” he says.
Not everything about fuel concerns petrol or diesel, however. “Most of the people around here use oil to heat their homes, and the Government did nothing about it,” Hugh Morgan says.
“You’re not allowed to burn coal. You’re not allowed to burn sticks. Don’t even let you build a house now with a chimney on it. How are those people going to afford a winter tank,” he says, angrily.
Currently, the gap in home kerosene prices on either side of the Border is significant, with a refill costing up to €1.60 a litre in the Republic, but less than £1 per litre (€1.16) in the North.
Kerosene is not supposed to cross the Border without taxes being paid. But it does. Privately, industry figures say HM Revenue and Customs check more thoroughly than the Revenue Commissioners.
The rises and falls in the fuel trade have left their mark along the Border, where once-profitable filling stations now stand abandoned in places, left behind by changing fortunes.
In an area where, for political and other reasons, people have for generations kept their counsel, there are not too many willing to speak openly to The Irish Times about their business.
There is little evidence that the fuel crisis is forcing people to drive less.
Hugh Morgan regards such a suggestion with derision: “People have to live, they have to go to work, they have to take the kids to school,” he says.
The winter will bring fresh challenges and costs for customers, he says, and people are not going to like them.
“Somebody has to pay for higher costs. That’s the way of the world,” he says.
“If taking a load of carrots from Cork to Dublin costs €50 more, then the prices are going to have to be paid by the people who are buying the carrots in the supermarket.”
For Colin Fee, the prospect of angry customers in his forecourt again is viewed wearily, especially when prices are changing hour to hour.
Fees believes prices should remain broadly within a range “where the taxes would decrease as fuel rises, and rise again when it comes back down”.
“There should be a mechanism that automatically controls these things,” he says. “This is not the last crisis we’re going to have, not by a long shot.”