Ageing petrol pumps need to be converted or replaced to display correct pricing.
A new plan is needed by garage owners to manage technical issues of showing higher prices at the petrol pumps.
Garages are preparing thousands of posters to put on petrol pumps to inform motorists about pricing. This is a cheaper solution to the problem than replacing or updating petrol pumps.
If a motorist comes in looking for five pounds worth of petrol and sees only fifty shillings going up on the petrol pump clock, then he'll know that he's not being cheated.
Over eleven thousand petrol pumps in the country are displaying the incorrect price. It would cost over £2 million to convert these pumps. Eventually, pumps will have to be converted when petrol is sold by the litre. However, it is reckoned that about forty per cent of petrol pumps are so old that they can not be converted. For metrication, these pumps would have to be replaced at a cost of about a thousand pounds each.
As petrol heads closer to a pound a gallon, the trade is getting ready for half gallon posting as a temporary answer.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 21 April 1977. The reporter is Michael Walsh.
