Hats off to the Irish Sailing Association for its successful campaign to persuade owners of diesel-powered pleasure craft to pay the Mineral Oil Tax. The ISA reckoned that, if more folk paid up, the nasty foreigners might allow boaters to continue to use patriotic green diesel:

It may already be too late to save the present diesel supply system in Ireland, but the very least we can do is to strengthen the country’s case by paying the tax. If we don’t do that, we won’t have a leg to stand on.

There have been other press releases since then, and the ISA has said that

The issue for leisure sailors is not the price of diesel but its availability.

Which suggests that it’s only a series of misfortunes that has prevented 99.75% of owners from paying the tax they should have paid. Perhaps the dog ate their chequebooks.

But the ISA put its shoulder to the wheel, its nose to the grindstone and its money where its mouth was, calling on other people to pay up. And, by golly, they did. It is no doubt as a result of the ISA’s call that the number of folk paying Mineral Oil Tax in 2015 (for 2014) was …

30%

… up on the previous year’s figure.

Admittedly that just meant it went from 20 to 26, so the non-compliance rate is still around 99.75%, but let us not mock honest effort. If the number continues to increase at six a year, there will be full compliance by the year 3677, which will be good; I look forward to recording the event.

For the record:

The income generated by the tax is about 10% of the amount the ISA gets from the state every year.