With regard to proposals outlined earlier this week that small transport operators, who have only one or two vehicles on the road, would have to randomly test their drivers for alcohol and other substances and having to call in a doctor, I will be bringing in proposals to the Department of Transport to consider a system that is currently being used in Norway. All new lorries there have a device that the driver must blow into it before he starts and if he is intoxicated the lo…<\/span>rry will not start. That sort of system seems to make far more sense to me than putting small employers to the expense of calling in a doctor several times a year, which frankly is a ludicrous suggestion. Everyone wants greater road safety but we have to consider all our options before we go ahead with any ridiculous suggestions. I will be raising this issue with the Department of Transport as soon as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With regard to proposals outlined earlier this week that small transport operators, who have only one or two vehicles on the road, would have to randomly test their drivers for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press-releases"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":446,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions\/446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelfitzmaurice.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}