Mr. Neil McDonnell:

I thank the committee for having us here today. The Freight Transport Association of Ireland has operated in Ireland for the past five years or so. The employers and companies we represent employ approximately 25,000 people and use 6,000 heavy goods vehicles and buses in the retail and passenger transport sectors.

The UK's HGV Road User Levy Act 2013 became effective yesterday for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. However, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands will be treated as foreign operators for the purposes of the Act. The interesting fact is that for UK operators, the levy is cost neutral. It operates like road tax does here for our transport companies. Therefore, if companies pay their road tax in the UK, they will have paid their UK road levy. However, the effect of this Act for us means that the typical truck that crosses the Border or takes the ferry to Britain will pay up to £1,000 per annum.

We want to speak in particular about the effect of this levy in regard to the north west. Like our colleagues in the Irish Road Haulage Association, we would prefer if the road user levy, RUL, did not apply anywhere on the island of Ireland and would love it if there was political consensus north of the Border on it, but there is not. A clear majority north of the Border wants it imposed. Therefore, we are afraid that if we pursue this as a policy goal, we will get nothing. That is not an option for our operators.

I am accompanied by Mr. Mick O'Dwyer and I will call on him to speak on this issue in a moment. He is the regional transport manager for the Musgrave Group, Ireland's largest domestic retailer and one of the largest employers in Ireland. It is expected that soon it will be the largest retailer on the island. The reason the north west is unique is that our people in the north west are in a situation that is almost unique in Europe, in that they must transit another jurisdiction to access their sea ports and airport. I am conscious of Deputy Conlan's comment earlier regarding an exemption for certain roads, but we do not concur with that view.

The A5 is a primary trunk route through Northern Ireland. Many people may not be aware - we have included this information in the annex to our submission - that Ireland will pay £50 million over the next two years to the British Exchequer to upgrade the A5 because of its importance as a transit route. As far as we are concerned, we have paid for that route and Irish hauliers should, as of right, be able to use it without having to pay the UK road user levy. The primary route from the south of Donegal and north Sligo is the A49-A509. This route is very important to the Donegal fishing industry and we would like to see this route exempted also. Despite the perception, an exemption could be done more easily done than expected because the same rules that would apply to cabotage could be used to ensure truckers could transit Northern Ireland and not pay the road user levy.

In regard to hauliers that who the Border, they do so for three main reasons. They cross to do business in Northern Ireland, to go through Northern Ireland or to get services such as services from garages or tyre companies. We would love to see 100% of that type of traffic to be exempt from the UK road user levy, but we do not think that will happen. We have provided some figures, but I have asked the secretary of our group to ensure these are not made available under freedom of information after this meeting because they include commercially sensitive data. However, up to 40% of the traffic by our members across the Border is transit traffic. These hauliers do not do business in Northern Ireland, but travel from the Republic, north into Donegal or come from Donegal back into the Republic. We believe it is justifiable, reasonable and legitimate to expect this traffic should not pay the UK road user levy, because all they are doing is travelling from one part of the Republic to another.

We were asked to comment on a number of other issues in our correspondence. On road tax, we concur with the views heard earlier. We included the OECD figures in our submission, because they are incontrovertible and show the extent to which people pay road tax. We already pay the highest road tax of the European nations in the OECD. Like the IRHA, we have experienced reflagging of our members. Mr. Flynn and I negotiate annually with members in regard to renewal. However, we are being told that people are sorry, but they will not pay us the same as the previous year because they have moved X numbers of their trucks to Newry or to Wales.

In regard to the Minister's announcement in January that he is considering a road user charge for Irish trucks, we would ask that any proposal the Minister introduces would be like that in the United Kingdom and be cost neutral for Irish hauliers.

If that is not going to be a runner, we would like the Minister to consider free tolls. He organised a toll holiday in November which we understood resulted in a substantial uptake in the use of the motorways by truckers. Clearly this is an issue. We have truckers going through small towns who should not be doing so. We ask the Minister to consider that.

I must say on behalf of the Freight Transport Association of Ireland that we strongly support commercial vehicle roadworthiness testing, or CVRT. It has demonstrably saved lives. It is also ensuring fair competition for operators like the Musgrave Group, which spends time, effort and money on its kit. We strongly support what the Road Safety Authority is doing in that regard.

While the rules on cabotage are a little tricky, they were introduced in the first place to allow international transport to take place in an economic and environmentally friendly manner. A haulier goes to another jurisdiction and delivers his load, and in order to make it viable economically, he picks up a load in that jurisdiction and can stay up to seven days and carry out three loads on the way home. These rules are very fair and we want them retained but the big issue in Ireland is that they are not enforced. When our hauliers go to Northern Ireland, Britain or the Continent, they will have their paperwork checked to ensure that they are obeying cabotage rules. The same does not happen to foreign operators here, and we have people openly operating non-domestic registered trucks out of depots in the Republic, and this is just not acceptable. Some are of the view that cabotage restrictions should be relaxed entirely but our submission shows that road tax on a Latvian truck is €543 per annum, so where do Deputies think the trucks doing domestic transport in the Republic will be coming from if those rules are relaxed? We should think long and hard about that before we decide we are going to bin the cabotage rules.

We were asked to comment on NERA and our members have similar experience to those of our colleagues in the IRHA. It is clear that the Labour Court and the National Employment Rights Authority are misinterpreting the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997. They are not applying the relevant EU directive, which is 2002/15 EC. This is leading to a misinterpretation of the working week in terms of hours worked, and it is leading to unfair outcomes for employers. Some are being accused of working employees for too long, others are being accused of paying below the minimum wage, but none of this is true. We wrote to the chief executive of the Labour Court and the head of NERA in December 2013 to point this out. Our legal advice is that the Labour Court and NERA are misapplying the law. When we met with officials from the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, they acknowledged internal legal opinions that also state that the Labour Court and NERA are misapplying the law, which quite frankly we think is a farcical situation. At a minimum, the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation needs to ensure immediately that there is a moratorium on any determinations against employers under the Organisation of Working Time Act 1997 until this is addressed.

The last issue on which we were asked to comment was outsourcing in the sector. We know from our member renewals that there is a re-flagging of Irish transport north of the Border, typically into Newry, or into Wales. When we were renewing with him in January, one of our members said directly to our face that he could now register in Anglesea and claim the road user rebate. We have actually given them a free pass to take their trucks out of Ireland but claim the levy from the Revenue Commissioners in Ireland, and this is causing a severe issue for us. The other reason outsourcing is occurring is that aside from the rebate which makes it viable for them to do so, not enforcing the cabotage restrictions here means that there is a positive inducement for them to leave the country. Due to the unfair interpretation of the law by the Labour Court, by NERA, and by the cowboy sector that is paying our transport workers below the minimum wage, legitimate operators are under attack from all fronts over here.

The last comment before I hand over to Mr. O'Dwyer-----