John Bull's other island
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LAST May, the 10 EEC Transport Ministers reached agreement in principle on quotas, hours, weights and taxation (CM, May 19). The details have to be filled in by civil servants for Ministers to ratify at their next meeting in December. At least, that is the hope.
That work is in the hands of the Irish Republic, who took over the Presidency of the Council from France on July 1. So it is an appropriate moment to look at road transport legislation in both territories across the Irish Sea.
Although Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom it has its own, quite separate, legislation on road haulage licensing. Own-account transport needs no licence. Professional road haulage is licensed, on a fairly liberal basis. But it is administered directly by the Northern Ireland Department of the Environment, not by independent Licensing Authorities. And some operators in Great Britain have complained that they are obstructed when seeking licences for subsidiaries in Northern Ireland.
This separate legislation has some odd effects. In many ways lorries from one part of the United Kingdom are treated like foreigners when in the other. Until 1980 a British hire-orreward operator had to apply for a licence to carry goods to or from Ulster, and his Ulster counterpart had to do likewise in Great Britain, Yet lorries from Belgium, the Netherlands and many other foreign countries with which the UK had liberal bilaterial agreements could enter without formality.
That was put right, and mutual exemption now exists. But there are still oddities. Cabotage — internal transport within one part of the UK — is still forbidden to vehicles licensed in the other part. And own-account vehicles from Ulster operating to Great Britain have to carry a document similar to that needed in some foreign countries.
From time to time there have been moves to bring the two sets of legislation into line. In effect this would make Northern Ireland the 10th Traffic Area. But this has been rejected by the industry.
British operators fear that circumstances in Ulster prevent proper application of the laws on vehicle maintenance and other safety legislation. This, they fear, would give Ulster hauliers a competitive edge if they were allowed to operate freely in Great Britain.
Across the water own-account operators have no wish to be brought within a licensing system. And professional hauliers fear that large British hauliers would swap their home territory if given the opportunity.
In the absence of pressure from the industry the Government seems content to leave things alone. And no doubt the further integration of the two parts of the UK would be seen in some quarters as having a political dimension, for better or worse according to the point of view of the observer.
The Repulic's existing licensing system is archaic. In 1981 a Commission recommended that it should be scrapped, and replaced with something similar to the British system. This is being resisted by the industry, though the Government seems determined to press ahead.
Until a bilateral agreement between the UK and the Republic came into force four years ago British hauliers operating to the Republic felt hard done by. They were restricted by the Irish licensing system to "a 15 miles radius of the principal post office in Dublin and Cork". To go further afield they had to obtain a licence, which was not always granted.
Meanwhile Irish operators coming to land increasingly in transit through) Great Britain were granted short-term 0licences without restriction.
To find the reason for this disparity it is necessary to look to Belfast, not Marsham Street. For hauliers from Northern Ireland suffered from none of the restrictions imposed on their compatriots from Great Britain. Dublin granted them licences without restrictions, despite bitter complaints from the Republic's own hauliers that their northern competitors enjoyed an unfair advantage through lower vat and fuel tax. As a result Ulster hauliers carried the vast majority of the cross-border traffic.
The reason for this favourable treatment lay in the Republic's constitutional claim that Northern Ireland is part of the Republic. The liberal treatment of Ulster hauliers was a practical demonstration of this claim.
Prompted by frustrated British hauliers, the DTp protested to Dublin from time to time about its stinginess in granting licences, and hinted at the possibility of reprisals. But their attention would be directed to the liberal treatment granted to those from Northern Ireland. No doubt there was no explicit threat that this situation would change for the worse if Britain started to be troublesome. But the message was received loud and clear, and was amplified by the Northern Ireland Office, which understandably felt that it already had enough problems, without the DTp adding to the list.
Finding itself prevented from taking reprisals, the DTp tried another tactic. The UK had bilateral road haulage agreements with every other European country, as well as some further afield like Cyprus and Tunisia. They pressed for a similar agreement with the Republic.
For many years Ireland refused even to start negotiations. Since its hauliers already had unrestricted access to the whole of the UK there could be no benefit to them in such an agreement. And they knew that the DTp would do its best to ensure that an agreement secured a better deal for British hauliers. This could only be at the expense of their Irish competitors.
So Dublin stalled, hinting that the favourable treatment of Northern Ireland hauliers would be unlikely to survive a bilateral agreement unscathed.
In the end the Irish were forced to the negotiating table by the EEC Commission. The Eurocrats pointed to a Community Directive which lays down the procedure for issuing licences for road haulage between EEC members. They complained that the arrangements in force between the UK and Ireland contravened this, and threatened action in the European Court.
So negotiations started, and eventually led to an agreement being signed in April 1980, coming into force three months later.
The agreement requires hauliers to carry permits, to be issued from an annuallynegotiated quota. But in practice there has been no shortage.
The favourable treatment for Northern Ireland hauliers is preserved in the agreement. Permits issued to them are quota-free, unless they are subsidiaries of companies based in Great Britain.
There are hopes that when the Republic's more liberal licensing system is in force the agreement may be made totally liberal. What happens after that depends on the general state of Anglo-Irish relations. Fortunately, this column is not required to predict those.