Mr. Michael Moroney:

Regarding engagement with the RSA, this is an EU regulation on tractor testing. We only became aware of it a number of weeks ago. It is due to be transposed into Irish law by 20 May, which is less than ten weeks away. In that period there has been no consultation with any organisation involved in agriculture. We have requested a meeting but we have not had a meeting so far. We feel it is unfair that we did not have an opportunity to have the same level of discussion as we had with the RSA and the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport over a lengthy period on the review of the agricultural specifications with regard to tractors and trailers, which was a really useful process. It took a bit of time, but the end result was a document that has been very useful to our members and has been very useful in enforcing proper and sensible legislation as it would apply to our industry. That has been missing in this case and that is why we made that point. It is only ten weeks until it is to be transposed into Irish law under the regulation.

We do not have an issue with slow-speed vehicles such as tractors not being allowed on a motorway. We are aware that there have been some incidents involving tractors and trailers. However, in some cases it was not a tractor responsibility; there were other issues attached to that.

The use of hard shoulders is a thorny issue. In one case a contractor was driving a butterfly mower - quite a big mower - front and back kit. In order to allow proper movement of traffic, the driver pulled into the hard shoulder. He continued to drive slowly for a period. However, in that queue of cars was a squad car and he was given two penalty points as a result. The converse of it was a man in another county who did not move in to the hard shoulder and caused a significant tailback. This incident happened in Senator O'Mahony's county. That person received penalty points for careless driving. Those are the contradictions with regard to the hard shoulders. We would like to get clarification on the matter.