Ireland will start to unwind the temporary cuts to fuel excise duties in September, Finance Minister Simon Harris said on Tuesday. The tax relief, introduced earlier this year to blunt the economic fallout from the Middle East conflict, will not end abruptly but will be reversed gradually, the minister added.
The current relief reduces petrol excise by 27 euro cent per litre and diesel excise by 32 euro cent per litre. Those reductions were due to expire on July 31 but will now be extended through to September 1. The short extension is expected to cost 270 million euros, or about $308 million, according to national broadcaster RTE. With this extension, the government estimates the total cost of the fuel supports will reach just over 1 billion euros.
Harris said the restoration of the duties will not occur as a single uniform increase at each step. Instead, the duties will be brought back in varying increments, a staged approach he described to reporters while en route to a cabinet meeting. He said the cabinet is scheduled to approve the plan at that meeting.
Details beyond the broad framework were not provided in his remarks. The minister's comments outlined the timing for the initial extension and the overall intent to phase the relief out, but the precise schedule of the incremental restorations and the sizes of those increments were not set out in the remarks cited.
The announced extension and the phased restoration together define the government's immediate path for the fuel excise policy put in place earlier this year. The measures and their costs were presented in simple numeric terms: the two per-litre reductions for petrol and diesel, the extension cost of 270 million euros, and a cumulative support bill of just over 1 billion euros.
Harris delivered these details while traveling to the cabinet meeting where the plan is expected to be formally approved, indicating that the measures remain subject to the government's internal decision process.
Summary
Ireland will extend temporary fuel duty cuts to September 1 and begin a staged restoration of those duties from September, with the extension costing about 270 million euros and total supports exceeding 1 billion euros.