The purpose of this Bill is to effect a number of miscellaneous amendments in the Road Transport Act of 1933. That Act, as Senators will remember, attempted to bring subject to regulation the business of carrying merchandise by road for reward. The Act was framed with great care but it was inevitable that, as soon as the Department of Industry and Commerce came to operate it, certain factors would arise which would necessitate amending legislation, because the available information concerning the extent of the business and the manner in which it was conducted was necessarily limited. It is a very widely scattered industry, carried on by a very large number of people, altogether different in the manner of its operation from the business of carrying passengers by road which had been brought subject to regulation by the Road Transport Act of 1932.
The main features of the Road Transport Act of 1933 were the sections which required that all persons engaged in the business of carrying merchandise for reward on the roads should, in the first instance, get certificates that they were engaged in the business during the qualifying period; and secondly, that they should be licensed to operate in the future. Senators will remember that last year we introduced the first amending Act, the sole purpose of which was to extend the period within which applications for existing carrier certificates could be made. That was necessitated by the fact that the big majority of people engaged in the business had failed to make application within the period specified in the original Act: that is, one month after the date of its passing. We found, however, that even at the end of the extended period there was still a number of carriers who had failed to make application. I was at first inclined to leave the position in that way; ruling these people out from the receipt of licences because of their failure to qualify under the Act; but when the number of them increased to 200 I felt that it would be unfair to penalise them to that extent because of their failure to get certificates and thereby debarring them from carrying on their business in the future.
One of the provisions of this Bill, therefore, is to extend the period within which application for these certificates can be made to the 1st of April in this year. The effect of extending the date to the 1st April will be to enable all those who applied subsequent to the 31st October of last year, the last date on which applications should have been made, but prior to the introduction of this Bill, to secure their certificates. It does not permit of any fresh applications in the future. We presume that by this time all persons interested in the business will have learned the nature of the legal requirements, having regard to the fact that extensive publicity has been undertaken by advertisements in the newspapers, by posters outside public buildings and Civic Guard stations and by broadcasting announcements, and also by reason of the fact that the date on which persons holding certificates were also required to have licences in order to operate had been fixed as the 1st February. There was, consequently, reason for believing that anybody who had failed to take notice of the existing legislation prior to that date would continue to act in a similar manner after that date. We have every reason to assume that all applications likely to arise are now in. The purpose of the extension is merely to enable us to deal with 200 applications which were late, and which otherwise would have to be excluded. The extension of the date in connection with the qualification certificates necessitates the cancellation of the order already made, fixing February 1st as the date on which the main provisions of the Act came into operation and the taking of power to fix another date after this Bill becomes law. That is done by Section 7.
Section 3 is a minor amendment, the purpose of which is to deal with a situation which was not foreseen. Apparently, it is the practice in many parts of the country to distribute newspapers to newsagents' shops in ordinary, passenger vehicles. It would be illegal for newspapers to be carried in that way under the terms of the 1933 Act, unless passenger vehicles were licensed under that Act. They were not eligible to be licensed, because they were not constructed for the carriage of goods. The purpose of the section is to make a passenger vehicle a lorry when used for the carriage of newspapers. The other main provisions of the Bill are to enable us to deal with certain difficulties which arose out of the administration of the original Act. It was frequently found that persons who had a lorry or lorries engaged in connection with road transport business had disposed of the lorry or lorries and purchased new ones. Where a new lorry was fitted with an Irish-built body it was sometimes found that the unladen weight was somewhat in excess of the weight of the old one. Under the terms of the original Act we could only issue a licence permitting business being carried on with lorries of the same total unladen weight as were possessed by the applicant during the qualifying period. Consequently, when the unladen weight was increased in that manner, the applicant was put in the position, in order to qualify, that he would have to dispose of the new lorries and get ones of the necessary unladen weight.
One of the purposes of Section 10 is to enable a certain element of discretion to be introduced where the circumstances are as I have described, and the unladen weight to be fixed, in respect of an application, slightly in excess of the unladen weight which would be fixed under the original Act, where, in the opinion of the Minister, it is desirable and just that that should be done.
Another sub-section of the same section introduces the element of discretion, where it appears that a lorry owned by a person applying for a licence was available in connection with his business, but was not in fact licensed during the critical period, or on the critical date. Senators will remember that an applicant under the original Act was required to state the number of lorries available for his business and licensed on a date selected by him during the qualifying period, a date described in the Act as "the critical date." Some persons engaged in this business had lorries available, but they were not licensed, because the business did not offer. They could have been licensed at short notice if there was need for doing so. This applies where the Minister for Industry and Commerce is reasonably satisfied that the situation was as I have described, and permits an unlicensed lorry or lorries, in the case of any applicant, to be taken into account in fixing the total unladen weight of the lorries or tractors as the case may be. These are the main provisions of the Bill and I do not think any of them can be regarded as controversial. They are really amendments of the original scheme, occasioned by the experience of the Department of Industry and Commerce in administering it.