Extending the Cycle-to-Work tax incentive scheme to children would “drive up bicycle prices”, the Department of Finance has said while rejecting the idea.
A written Dail reply by the department, signed minister for finance Michael Noonan, said: “As children tend to receive bicycles from their parents there is a concern that such an extension to the scheme would become a subsidy towards purchases which would happen anyway and would therefore drive up bicycle prices, as subsidies tend to do. In addition, any subsidy to the children of parents who are in employment could be seen as discriminatory.”
It was in response to Timmy Dooley, a Co Clare based Fianna Fail TD, who asked: “To ask the Minister for Finance his views on proposals to extend the cycle to work scheme to the children of participants of the scheme in order to increase child cycling levels and increase the modal share of cycling nationally in the long term.”
The minister said that Cycle to Work scheme is “essentially an environmental measure”, introduced to “help lower carbon emissions, reduce traffic congestion, encourage more employees to cycle to work and also to help improve health and fitness levels”.
The reply from Noonan’s office added: “As Minister for Finance I must be conscious that the introduction or expansion of any scheme creates a cost and that cost must be recovered elsewhere. It was estimated at the time of the introduction of the scheme that approximately 7,000 employees would avail of it over the first five-year period of its operation. However anecdotal evidence would suggest that the scheme has been considerably more successful than this. I am not in a position at this point, therefore, to consider extending the scheme as the Deputy suggests and I have no plans to do so.”
Cyclist.ie – The Irish Cycling Advocacy Network – in its Pre-Budget 2015 Submission asked the Minister to consider extending the Revenue scheme to those on social welfare (job seekers, in particular) as it discriminates in favour of those who are in employment.
Many citizens cannot afford a car and those seeking work need the mobility to attend interviews.
http://cyclist.ie/?s=budget+2015
Drive UP prices? How much higher can they get? Have they never heard of supply and demand? Prices are already very high in Ireland. An average bike in Belgium is 350-500 EUR where here it easily is double for a similar one.
I fully support the subsidising bikes for job seekers.
maybe they should consider including child seats though, many parents drop their kids to school/chreche before cycling on to work