Mr. Eoin Gavin:

They range from sole traders to companies. The average fleet size is four to five trucks. What our members are considering is four or five hauliers getting together and setting up offices in Liverpool, Belgium, France and Bulgaria. Nobody wants to reflag or to have a Bulgarian registration on their truck hauling Irish beef out of a factory in Carlow. That does not look good for our image or our export product. However, there is a solution - namely, to bring our road tax in line with the rest of Europe and the UK. There should be three categories: €750 for a small truck, €1,000 for a medium-sized truck and €1,250 for a large one. There could be three options to pay for it. The first would be to stem the flow of vehicles out of the country. Of the 2,000 trucks that are already gone, if we got even 400 of them back the direct taxation on them alone would bring in €20 million.

If a further 5,000 trucks go, they will either go out of business or leave the jurisdiction. If we are to stay in the haulage business, the options are to register outside the country or else go out of business. We cannot compete with a person in the haulage business in Newry.

The second option is to put a proper tax structure in place. If we have a proper tax structure, the Government can set about putting a pay-as-you-go system in place. The Government can implement it at the ports or at the Border crossings. A charge of €10 a day will yield €23 million. We counted the vehicles with out-of-state registration numbers coming off the ferries as well as the trucks coming from the eight main Border crossings last summer and arrived at that figure..

The third option is to charge the vehicles coming in, pay as you go, pay a levy at the port, similar to the levy we pay in the United Kingdom. When we go to the United Kingdom, we must go online and pay £10 every morning for each truck going into the North. Why not implement the same here? This system cannot be implemented here without changing our current tax structure, which must happen in this year's budget.

If it does not happen in this year's budget, the Irish Road Haulage Association will not be before this committee again. The situation is critical. At present 2,000 hauliers are making plans to leave the country. Many believe that spending time before the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform may be a waste of my time. The cost of fuel was about staying in business, but the road tax issue is about of moving the business out of Ireland and that is a major decision for any company.

The third option relates to commercial vehicles. At present there are 322,000 commercial vehicles, some 300,000 of which are small vans. Some of these small vans are operated by commercial business haulage companies, some are operated by people who should not be operating them as commercial vans. The motor tax on small vans is €330 compared to €4,000 for a truck. That is not very fair. The motor tax on trucks has been increased by a percentage in each budget. We are a small community of the total fleet, some 22,000 vehicles between haulage companies and people who own their own trucks, be they farmers or factories. The remaining 300,000 vans are paying very little. It is a political decision to increase the motor tax on vans by €20 or €30, in order to balance out the significant difference in the tax on trucks and make it cost neutral. I will also give two other options to make this cost neutral.

If we need an export-led economy, is €20 million a great deal of money to spend on the haulage sector? We proved the argument that the fuel rebate was tax neutral. We can prove that our proposals are tax neutral.