Irish border progress
Page 5
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UNION and employer pressure is building up to resolve operators' problems on the Northern Ireland/Irish Republic frontier.
Transport and General Workers Union delegates in Northern Ireland are calling for more campaigning and lobbying on the part of the Road Transport Association, the operators' association in Ulster, to relieve bottlenecks at the border.
And they are to press the TGWU's commercial group to add its pressure to the campaigns to alleviate difficulties in both a British and an EEC context.
The RTA, meantime, is continuing with its campaign to resolve the problem where Republic customs officers were impounding Northern vehicles which they alleged were undertaking cabotage — the carriage of goods for hire or reward entirely within the Republic.
This peculiarly Irish interpretation of cabotage (CM. October 22) arose when operators detached semi-trailers in the Republic, returned to the North over night and resumed their journeys the following day.
While Republic authorities have since assured the Northern Ireland Department of the Environment that this practice can continue if the same tractive unit is used for the second day's traction, the RTA has asked for arrangements to be made to allow for breakdowns (when the same tractive unit is unavailable) and for weekends when next day traction is inappropriate.