Two Irish MEPs Marian Harkin and Proinsias de Rossa disagree over a vote concerning self employed truck and bus drivers to be taken in the European parliament in Strasbourg this week.

She said that Deputy de Rossa’s determination to have owner drivers brought under the EU Working Time Directive was not supported by Ireland’s Road Safety Authority or by the findings of the European Commission in regard to safety considerations.

She continued: “It would be hugely damaging to Ireland’s truck and bus transport business in which owner drivers play such an important role if the European Parliament votes to require owner driver compliance with the working time directive.

“I have been lobbying hard for votes in favour of the proposal and I hope all MEPs from the 32 counties will join together and vote for a measure which is very much in the interests of Ireland North and South.

“It is important to note that all drivers, self employed or employed are subject to the same driving time regulations.  These regulations are strictly enforced and address road safety issues.

“The fact that the Road Safety Authority in April stated in a submission to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Scrutiny:  “It is reasonable to conclude that concerns about road safety are adequately addressed through existing legislative instruments”, indicated that owner truck and bus drivers should, as the EU Commission proposed, be excluded from the Working Time Directive.

“In regard to enforcing the inclusion of self employed drivers in the Working Time Directive the Road Safety Authority also stated... ‘the (EC) report argued that while there may be some health and safety benefits to including self employed, those benefits were difficult to quantify and needed to be considered.  Along with the additional stress and financial difficulty that self employed workers might experience as a consequence of their inclusion.  The impact assessment concluded that full coverage of all self employed mobile workers was unenforceable’.

“It is totally unrealistic to expect that authorities can effectively monitor the working time of owner drivers, eg. under the Working Time Directive administrative work relating to their tax returns for last year does not count as working time, but administrative work relating to the job underway does.  It is impossible to police this kind of regulation and therefore unreasonable to legislate for it.

“Entrepreneurs should be able to organise their own working time, to try to enforce European Legislation to limit it is not only unworkable but is an example of the worst kind of European bureaucracy and red tape imaginable.

“Because of the large number of self- employed drivers and their importance to the local and national economies I will be strongly advocating that all Irish MEPs vote in favour of the European Commissions proposal to exclude them from the Working Time Directive”, Marian Harkin MEP concluded.