DEFENDING HIS LEADERSHIP from a no-confidence motion, Micheál Martin told the Dáil on Tuesday that the government’s recent actions to reduce fuel costs were “proportionately the largest assistance package of any European country.”

Martin uttered this claim in defence of accusations that the Irish government had been profiteering from an increased intake in taxes following a surge in fuel prices.

However, the claim echoed a line repeated for the previous week by members of the government, including Minister Helen McEntee. On Monday, after the announcement of an additional relief package, she said this amounted to “more than three quarters of a billion euro,” making it “the highest per capita in Europe.”

However, it was not immediately clear whether this was true or not — there is no official list of fuel relief measures carried out in Europe, or even the EU, to narrow the focus slightly.

Furthermore, making such a list is not straightforward — it can be difficult to navigate the byzantine publications of government to find costings even when it is in English, let alone in the 14 official languages of the EU.

Translated news reports from EU member states were also difficult to collate, given differences in how such costs are reported or calculated, if at all.

The data

To address these inconsistencies, The Journal contacted media organisations who are partnered with EDMO, The European Digital Media Observatory, which The Journal is part of.

More than a dozen European journalists responded, giving an outline of their government’s relief packages as well as any costings that had been released or, in some cases confirming that no such relief had been decided yet.

The Journal collated these measures into a spreadsheet. However, the data we received was not exhaustive — for example, in ten countries we had to rely on public media reports to fill in this data.

Similarly, many countries had announced measures, but have yet to publish estimated costs for these. Nevertheless, we hope that this data set gives an up-to-date approximation of how the EU countries are responding to the fuel crisis caused by the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran.

The spreadsheet can be accessed here.

Spain, Germany & Poland

The Irish government’s fuel supports largely consist of reductions in taxes and levy, particularly excise taxes, as well as postponing an increase to carbon tax that was due to come into effect later this year.

While these are certainly significant, do they amount to “proportionately the largest assistance package of any European country”?

According to our data: no, but it’s up there.

The government has given some information on how they had initially arrived at their claim.

In his speech to the Dáil, Micheál Martin had backed his point, saying: “The closest any country comes is Spain, where the support package is over one quarter smaller. The packages in Germany and Poland are roughly 90% lower than the supports we are implementing.”

The first part, about Spain, is true. Spain has introduced a plethora of measures that are expected to cost about €5bn. While this is about 6.7 times larger than Ireland’s combined packages are expected to be worth, its population is about 9 times Ireland’s.

So, while Spain is allocating about €100 in fuel relief for every resident, Ireland’s smaller population means that, per person, we’re allocating about €139 to ease the cost of fuels.

In a response to The Journal, the Department of the Taoiseach said that they include welfare packages in their calculations which they put at “€145 – €155 per capita”.

Germany is allocating a little more than €19 per person (significantly lower, but not quite 90% as the Taoiseach said). Poland’s figure is harder to discern; they have given a monthly cost. This costs is 90% lower than Ireland’s in the first month, but will no longer be by the end of the second.

In response to The Journal’s inquiries, the Department of Taoiseach noted: “there is no official central data on the scale of measures adopted by countries,” but that they used “publicly available data for the total packages for Germany, Poland and Spain and compared those on a per capita basis with the package announced for Ireland.”

Are we number one?

So, if Ireland outspent all the countries previously mentioned, what country has “proportionately the largest assistance package of any European country”?

Probably Cyprus. That is, of the countries that have released cost estimates.

Many countries have announced massive interventions, but have not said how much they expect them to cost. For example, the outgoing Órban government of Hungary had promised strict price caps on fuel, which need to be subsidised to stop fuel shortages.

Typically, these interventions are expensive, but no estimate of the cost had been released.

Cyprus, on the other hand, has reduced taxes on fuels so much that it has got them into trouble with the EU. 

It was announced last week that, in total, these subsidies are expected to cost €200m.

While this may not seem like an impressive figure compared to other countries, Cyprus has a population of less than a million, meaning that, per capita, €200 is being focussed on fuel subsidies.

This is significantly higher than Ireland’s even if you include welfare packages.

Later that same week, the Maltese finance minister said that, due to the fuel crisis, subsidies were estimated to have an additional cost of between €80m-€100m. While this is substantially less than Ireland’s package costs, so too is their population, at about 574,250.

At the lowest end of their estimate, this puts them at just over the Irish per capita spend on fuel relief. At the higher end, they are spending more than €174 per resident — again, significantly more than Ireland.

However, these Maltese subsidies are not an entirely new package. Rather, they are the increased costs of already existing measures due to the fuel crisis.

In a response to The Journal, the Department of the Taoiseach said that data from 15 EU countries compiled by the Department of Finance, using publicly available sources, showed Ireland had the second-highest emergency payment per capita.

At the time of writing, neither the Department of Taoiseach nor the Department of Finance has made this report available to The Journal.

There were eight EU countries that no figures for the total cost of their fuel relief packages were found — in five of those cases, reporters from the countries told The Journal that no total figure had been made public.

So while these may have more generous relief packages, that information is not available to us and, likely, reliable data isn’t available to the Irish government either.

Ireland’s fuel relief package is not the largest per capita — however, it is notably higher than most EU countries and some have not given any relief measures at all.

In the case of Denmark, a government has yet to form since a recent election, but a relief package has been discussed.

Estonia, on the other hand, appears to have simply decided that subsidising fuel is a poor decision.

In other cases, the relief offered aims to wean people off fuel rather than just subsidise buying it at high prices. A €1bn package expected to be officially passed in the Netherlands today is expected to include extra money to help people insulate their homes.

Verdict

In summary, the government had said that its fuel relief packages were “proportionately the largest assistance package of any European country.”

This is false. As per our reader’s guide, this means the claim is inaccurate. Cyprus is allocating more money per capita.

Other countries have also announced measures, but not their costs, so we are unable to make a complete ranking.

However, Ireland’s fuel relief package does appear to be substantially bigger per capita than most EU countries, outspending 16 of the 19 EU countries that have given a cost estimate. 

The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.