Mr. Gerry McMahon:

The first issue is enforcement and the answer is quite simple. We, as employers, should not be requested to become enforcers. We have two good agencies in this State for road transport. Seated beside me are representatives of An Garda Síochána and we also have the Road Safety Authority. Both organisations have people who are competent and trained to be enforcers. I wish to clearly state that enforcement is not part of our brief.

On penalty points, it is very unfair to ask an employee to remove responsibility from the owner of equipment to keep it in a roadworthy condition.

The employee, through their contract of employment, is already required to carry out what is called a walk-around check. Any time a driver takes over a new vehicle, be it a truck, trailer or whatever type of vehicle, they have a duty of care to go around their vehicle and check it. Specific criteria are involved in that respect, and they are documented and agreed by all the agencies.

If a driver does not identify any problem or is not aware of anything on the vehicle being broken and on being stopped at a checkpoint is found to be wrong, it is unfair that the driver should have to take penalty points for that. The employer has the responsibility of keeping their vehicles roadworthy and all the responsibility should lie with the employer only. A tranche of penalty points is provided in our legislation that will cover drivers. I am sure we are all well aware of them, as are drivers. It relates to my earlier point about the difficulty of getting employees to enter our industry. Employees would perceive this to be another thorn in their sides and it is turning them away from the sector. We need to make the sector a better, rather than a worse, place to work. That is not to say we do not honour our responsibilities with respect to road safety. We do, but in respect of the specific penalty point offence only, it must apply to the owner of the vehicle and not the person driving the vehicle.

Regarding the test certificates for vehicles, this has been a bone of contention since the new legislation was drafted with the input of our organisation on behalf of the industry. National car testing was introduced many years ago. It has been a successful initiative and we agree that it has definitely helped matters. We were well used to having our vehicles tested and under the old system we produced our vehicle, be it a truck or trailer, every 12 months at our discretion and we got a test certificate for 12 months from the date of the test. The position changed with the introduction of the new legislation 18 months or two years ago in that the test certificate only covers the period up to date of registration of the vehicle. If one's truck has been off the road for three months and one brings it in for testing, one will only get a temporary certificate for six months. The truck must be produced again for testing after six months and a certificate will be given covering a period of 12 months. A driver has to pay paying for testing covering 24 months for only a 15-month or an 18-month contract, which is very unfair.

We have been dealing with the Road Safety Authority on this issue. It has the main responsibility for it. The process is under review. The members may not understand the process and I will explain it. If a small company owns ten trucks, it could own 100 trailers. We have what is called a drop trailer. If a person is working for a company, it may ask them to leave three empty trailers at its site and it will load them up at its convenience. As there is a great deal of seasonal work, particularly in the agriculture sector, with fluctuations in demand and peaks at busy times, 50% of one's trailer fleet may be off the road for six months of the year. It is very unfair that one should be asked to pay 24 months tax, if one cannot produce a vehicle within a six-month period. We have made that point clearly to the Road Safety Authority. It is considering this in the context of its database and it is building a new database because it did not know what was in place when the new system was introduced. That is reason we are objecting to that requirement in its former guise. It is hoped we will be able to come to an agreeable resolution with the RSA. The best system is that when one turns up for one's test, one would be covered for 12 months from the date of one's test and one would pay for cover for that period. That is workable with everyone in the environment. That covers the three questions that were raised.