Bulgarians barred
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THE IRISH GOVERNMENT is to clamp down on the number of Bulgarian hauliers entering the country following complaints from the Irish Overseas Transport Association.
IOTA, which represents most of the country's international hauliers, claimed that the statesubsidised Bulgarian trucks were off-loading cargoes which its members normally carried before taking on Irish meat for distribution to eastern European countries.
In future Bulgarian hauliers will be barred from bringing produce into the country and will be forced to travel with empty trucks to Ireland before taking on their consignments of Irish meats. They will also be barred from transporting any other goods, except meat and will have their permits stamped "For the carriage of Irish meat only."
One fleet of Bulgarian trucks recently ferried 10,000 tons of meat to Iran for the Anglo-Irish meats group. It involved 600 truckloads over a period of three to four months. They travelled on the Irish Continental Line Ferry from Rosslare to Le Havre and onwards by the overland route to Tehran.
There is little interest among Irish hauliers in making the trip to Tehran, but the involvement of the heavily subsidised east Europeans in carrying inward traffic, particularly the Italian fruit consignments on which so many Irish hauliers depend for backloads, was bound to meet with stiff opposition.