Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The primary purpose of the carrier liability provisions in the Bill is quite straightforward. Carriers which bring non-national passengers into the State should satisfy themselves that those passengers have with them the appropriate documentation to allow them to disembark at their destination – be it a port or airport – in accordance with Irish immigration requirements. For that to work in a sensible practical way, it has to apply to every vehicle arriving in the State from outside the common travel area and, accordingly, it has to apply to the persons responsible for every such vehicle. The Bill, as it stands and subject to the right of the House to amend it, carefully defines a "carrier" in an inclusive all encompassing way.

I do not believe Senator Terry's amendment would add anything helpful to the definition. For example, if I travel alone in a camper van, commercial truck or minibus from France to Rosslare, no issues arise for me under the carrier liability provisions. If, on the other hand, I travel the same route with passengers, there may be issues under this legislation but the immigration officer will not know whether I am alone or whether I have passengers, nor can he tell what is the situation even if the vehicle is not designed for passengers or if it is not customarily used for carrying paying passengers.

The thinking behind the proposed use of the term "carriers of passengers", as suggested by Deputy Terry's amendment, appears to be a desire to confine the scope of the carrier liability provisions to commercial passenger carriers, airlines, ferries and bus companies only. However, it ignores the practicality that unless the term "carrier" applies universally to all arrivals in the State, private and commercial, designed for passengers or cargo only, or for both, the scheme simply will not work. A definition of the sort proposed in the amendment, in attempting to exempt the driver of a private car, actually provides a coach and four, if I may mix metaphors, for the smart and unscrupulous operator to find a way to circumvent the law.

It is not as if the Bill would place an unbearable burden on the operator of a private vehicle. It is only common sense that a driver should know who is in his or her car and check before embarking on the journey that everybody has their passports. In the example of the Rosslare-Cherbourg ferry, the term "carrier" has two meanings in that context. If the carrier is the master of the ship in one sense and also the driver of a vehicle that goes on to the ship in another sense both are encompassed within the definition. In order to get on the Rosslare-Cherbourg ferry at Cherbourg, for example, one will have to satisfy the owners of the boat or the master of the boat that one is documented. It will not be a problem for somebody who is driving their family or driving a group of friends onto a boat in a car because the ferry owner will be caught by this legislation and will not allow undocumented passengers onto the boat.

If I was to say that, in this context, a carrier should be defined as a "carrier of passengers", it could be implied that if one is driving a vehicle not adapted for passengers, they are somehow outside the category. The only sense of such an amendment would be to put the carrier – the owner of a lorry, camper, caravan or whatever – at a disadvantage in so far as there were unknown passengers on their vehicle.