The owners of up to 3,500 Irish-registered lorries are making plans to re-register them outside the State by Christmas, the Irish Road Haulage Association has warned.
The move is a result of differences in road tax, with a heavy goods vehicle costing €4,000 to tax for a year in the Republic but just €823 (£640) in Northern Ireland.
Already the hauliers claim up to 1,500 heavy goods vehicles, out of a national fleet of some 22,000, have been re-registered outside the State, in such places as Northern Ireland, over the last 18 months.
A briefing by hauliers in Dublin was also told Irish-registered lorries hauling goods across the UK were required to pay a road toll of €10 per day, while UK-registered lorries were not. There is no similar charge on foreign lorries operating in the Republic.
West coast
The briefing heard that as a result of the unequal trading environment, fish from Ireland’s west coast, cattle from Co Clare and meat from Waterford are among items routinely transported in Northern Ireland-registered lorries because their Southern counterparts cannot compete.
As a result some 50,000 jobs in the industry in the South are under threat, the briefing heard.
Verona Murphy who runs Drumur Transport based in New Ross, Co Wexford, said the business could not compete with other European firms for contracts in the Republic.
Ms Murphy said the importance of exports to the Irish economic recovery had been acknowledged by the Government but there was an unequal playing field between the costs faced by Irish hauliers and those from other jurisdictions.
