WHO'S TO BLAME FOR POOR COMPLIANCE?
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Brewer is highly critical of Irish enforcement standards but concedes that they are improving following the creation of the Road Safety Authority in 2006. "They are actually doing the job; beforehand the Department of Transport essentially did nothing," he claims.
He says the government aims to match the level of enforcement achieved by VOSA in the UK but this is undermined by glaring inconsistencies.
He adds: "It's absolutely legal for a 17-year-old without an HGV licence to pull 30 tonnes of goods using an agricultural tractor. It makes a nonsense of the guy who is trying to be compliant."
He also believes that clients are often just as much to blame for non-compliance as the hauliers themselves. "There are industries that put pressures on hauliers because they want work done for such a 4ow price that it can't be done legally."