{"id":96696,"date":"2026-05-04T07:18:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/96696\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T07:18:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:18:14","slug":"we-got-it-in-neck-over-price-gouging-iran-war-another-woe-for-border-filling-stations-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/96696\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We got it in neck over price-gouging\u2019: Iran war another woe for Border filling stations \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the fuel trade for all his working life, Colin Fee, who owns and runs the Maxol<\/a> filling station on the Dublin Road in Dundalk<\/a>, Co Louth<\/a>, stills bear emotional scars from last month\u2019s protests over soaring fuel prices.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was personal. I could show you text messages I got, but I won\u2019t show because they\u2019re that angry and rude. We got it in the neck, and unfairly, too,\u201d he tells The Irish Times outside his shop.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"ColinColin Fee says constant increases in the cost of doing business here is biggest issue the industry faces. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

In the wake of the Government\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

But trade lost has not been recovered, or not all of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur 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,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it takes \u20ac1.20 out of every \u20ac2 spent. The other 80 cent is shared between me, Maxol, Reynolds, the transport company, [forecourt retailer] Circle K<\/a>, who have the loading facility in Dublin Port.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen, 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Significant\u2019 fuel support schemes worth \u20ac220m confirmed for farmers and hauliers<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s got very hard to ply your trade in the south \u2013 very hard. There\u2019s 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\u2019s affecting everybody,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

He lists off different costs: the increase in the minimum wage, pension auto-enrolment<\/a>, the extra bank holidays and then smaller costs such as the \u20ac1,000 licence for selling tobacco.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s got to a point where it\u2019s very hard,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Industry representative Kevin McPartlan, chief executive of Fuels for Ireland, says currency shifts are no longer the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s now about that our taxes are so much higher and our regulatory compliance costs so much greater,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Equally, tougher European Union<\/a> rules surrounding the addition of bioethanol and biodiesel added to diesel to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions in the Republic drives up costs.<\/p>\n

For Colm McKenna, who closed his Texaco filling station in Muff, Co Donegal<\/a>, nearly a year ago, last month\u2019s protests convinced him he was right to quit.<\/p>\n

A year on, he still blames the Green Party<\/a> and condemns Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a> and Fine Gael<\/a> for letting it \u201cwag the dog\u201d on environmental policy because they needed the Greens to stay in power.<\/p>\n

He believes the peak seen in fuel prices in March will return because the US-Iran<\/a> conflict will not go away soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe British had their troubles in south Armagh years ago. Now, Trump has brought 50 \u2018south Armaghs\u2019 on his head and the rest of us will pay the price for it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The number of filling stations along the Border has reduced over the years; the surviving ones depend more on non-fuel sales.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\"HughHugh Morgan, of Morgan Fuels, says Government should have scrapped carbon tax once trouble flared in the Gulf. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Morgan, a man of strong opinions, says the carbon tax<\/a> should never have been introduced and the Government should have abandoned it at the first sign of trouble in the Gulf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they had taken that step as a goodwill gesture on the first day, the protests would never have happened,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Morgan holds no truck with the environmental arguments behind carbon taxes; he doesn\u2019t believe climate change<\/a> is happening, despite the available scientific evidence proving it is.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough it did come very close at one stage to being on parity, or being slightly cheaper, but it didn\u2019t happen,\u201d one leading industry figure says, speaking on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

The increased rebate has helped since, he told The Irish Times. \u201cThough, the first tranche of that probably only lasted days before it was wiped out,\u201d he told The Irish Times.<\/p>\n

So far, however, clients are paying fuel higher bills. \u201cThey\u2019re being very good. We deal with a lot of multinationals, they\u2019ve all been very understanding,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

There are other actions the Government could take such as introducing barrier-free tolls on motorways, he says.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cDepending how far you are from the Border, it\u2019s still cheaper to go north and fill up because the groceries, drink, even minerals are cheaper. The North doesn\u2019t have the bottle return charge, for example,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The northern businesses made gains because the British government\u2019s 2022 decision to cut five pence per litre off excise after the Ukrainian conflict began was never reversed.<\/p>\n

For now, the British action pales by comparison with the larger cuts imposed by the Government in Dublin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rural filling stations are more than just about fuel, says Kevin McPartlan, especially where other local services have been lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019s about much more than losing fuel,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Not everything about fuel concerns petrol or diesel, however. \u201cMost of the people around here use oil<\/a> to heat their homes, and the Government did nothing about it,\u201d Hugh Morgan says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not allowed to burn coal. You\u2019re not allowed to burn sticks. Don\u2019t even let you build a house now with a chimney on it. How are those people going to afford a winter tank,\u201d he says, angrily.<\/p>\n

Currently, the gap in home kerosene prices on either side of the Border is significant, with a refill costing up to \u20ac1.60 a litre in the Republic, but less than \u00a31 per litre (\u20ac1.16) in the North.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

There is little evidence that the fuel crisis is forcing people to drive less. <\/p>\n

Hugh Morgan regards such a suggestion with derision: \u201cPeople have to live, they have to go to work, they have to take the kids to school,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The winter will bring fresh challenges and costs for customers, he says, and people are not going to like them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody has to pay for higher costs. That\u2019s the way of the world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf taking a load of carrots from Cork to Dublin costs \u20ac50 more, then the prices are going to have to be paid by the people who are buying the carrots in the supermarket.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Colin Fee, the prospect of angry customers in his forecourt again is viewed wearily, especially when prices are changing hour to hour.<\/p>\n

Fees believes prices should remain broadly within a range \u201cwhere the taxes would decrease as fuel rises, and rise again when it comes back down\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere should be a mechanism that automatically controls these things,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is not the last crisis we\u2019re going to have, not by a long shot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the fuel trade for all his working life, Colin Fee, who owns and runs the Maxol filling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[33977,33978,33975,1292,33970,33976,33971,1092,33973,27985,34,33972,33974,213,12258,33979,8634],"class_list":{"0":"post-96696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-auto-enrolment","9":"tag-carbon-tax","10":"tag-circle-k","11":"tag-climate-change","12":"tag-common-ground","13":"tag-donegal","14":"tag-dundalk","15":"tag-european-union","16":"tag-fuel-protests","17":"tag-green-party","18":"tag-iran","19":"tag-louth","20":"tag-maxol","21":"tag-oil","22":"tag-retail","23":"tag-revenue-commissioners","24":"tag-ukraine-crisis"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116515091533423930","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}