Mr. Eugene Drennan:

I am glad to see our years of lobbying the Deputy when he was working in the area of transport have not gone astray. It is nice to see Senator McDowell again. I will not tell the State secret of where we drank pints together.

Regarding pressures on compliant rather than non-compliant businesses, there is definitely a wish in the protocol, as reported in the The Irish Timesyesterday by Simon Carswell, who is well-respected, that under the new agreement, the new EU-UK data sharing arrangements will use commercial data on trade flows rather than the international customs process. In Ireland we are married to the customs union code. We cannot vary from it. There is no flexibility. It is never taken into account that people have a record of compliance. However, the concept of a trusted trader is extended in the protocol. Ease of movement is built into it but we do not have that here. Revenue chases down businesses to various degrees. We keep our money in a trader account number, TAN, account. Should we owe money on some goods coming through and should our TAN account not be topped up or be short by as little as €5 or 5 cent, we are not allowed to move. Mr. Nolan had five trailers held up in the port one weekend day since Christmas. He had to bounce five trucks and bounce his driver without a trailer to Wexford and take him back on Monday. The total amount due was less than €200 and on one trailer it was less than €5. There was no trust. A well-respected, licensed, tax-compliant haulier could not be trusted to move. That is what we mean.

On the change of market, the difference in cost and whether I see it changing, I do not in the immediate future. However, the trends will change for the southern ports, especially the Wexford ports, in how we do business with the UK because of the easement in the North. Those routes are already challenged by a reduction in the use of freight, especially in the low season in the winter and by the increase in direct ferries sailing from Rosslare. There is a challenge there already, and anything that changes that may result in the loss of one of those routes because of numbers. As alluded to by the previous presentation to the committee, which I picked up, evidence of or statistics on where freight flows have come to and where they have renewed and returned to have been published in recent weeks. That code statistic is slightly flawed in that it is being compared with the past two years. It was all skew-ways anyway. It should have been compared with our higher usage before that. Do I see movement on it? Not unduly immediately except on the English routes affected by Brexit. However, we need all routes. We have now developed the direct routes but we also need to keep our traditional routes to the UK open, as we are an island, because it gives us much more connectivity. It is far better for trade and for tourism. If we can keep our other routes open and an easement of the old land bridge going through the UK, we would have a little competition that would help to stymie the €300 increase or hold it at bay. It is expensive in comparison with other routes around Europe and with the price we paid previously. It gets passed on to our producers and manufacturers.

On the shortage of drivers and the economic migrants, the Irish licensing system and the agreements between countries are the problem. To try to get a test and bring drivers into employment and experience has been very slow. For migrants who are already here, if they are able to work and ready and able to get a licence, they would certainly be employable, even if only at the lighter end of the commercial business such as vans and parcel delivery, to start in safety. The work is there. The problem is the delays in getting tests. The criteria for getting a licence have been difficult enough, but in May, new criteria are coming from Europe. They will be imposed on Ireland. Someone who has a licence for lighter vehicles and comes in for a commercial test will be able to move directly to bigger freight if they are suitable and have the training. They will not have to go step by step through all the grades. That should lead to some easement.

Also on the migrant issue, specifically with respect to Ukrainians, in early 2019 I started to write about the possibility these people would come. A governmental exchange of criteria would be needed to be able to accept the quality of driver training in one of these other countries. The Road Safety Authority, RSA, would have to approve the criteria, RSA representatives would then have to visit that regime and recommend it, and then the RSA would want them to sit a test when they would come and for them to go through the regulatory systems here. The big problem that was coming, and it was coming before the war, and we wrote to them and alerted them, was that there was no Government for ours to exchange with. It was not possible.

Regarding people from other countries coming here as economic migrants either by circuitous routes or even with a visa, we put forward a proposal recently that we could recruit some who have a driving background or who would be interested in coming with a visa, get them to do an English language course, and they would be allowed to work 25 hours a week as part of the criteria, and in the meantime they could go through the licensing stages in the education and training boards, ETBs while they were here. We would know who we would have, what we would have, communicate with them in English and see their value. These students would either pay to come here or would come by arrangement. That would ensure the ETBs would have a body of people to keep the courses alive with enough places left for whoever needed to be trained here. It would give certainty in numbers doing the courses and give us a chance to see who they were and if they were suitable.

Then, they can come through the proper channels of coming here under an employment visa. There has been slow take-up on that and we have not progressed that very well.