Reports of truckers being offered up to €25,000 to smuggle illegal migrants has been branded as 'appalling' by a driver.
The Irish Daily Mail has claimed drivers around the country have been offered the money to smuggle illegal migrants into the European Union.
Truck driver Cyril McGuinness told Lunchtime Live he hasn't been offered money but it's not something new.
"I think it's appalling," he said.
"There has been smuggling since the time of horses and carts.
"Most professional hauliers would have nothing to do with that, whether it's people or drugs or whatever.
"But there are people that will smuggle".
'They should be locked away'
Mr McGuinness recalled the case of 39 people found dead in the back of a lorry in England in 2019.
"Anyone that does it, anyone that accepts it should be locked away and the keys thrown away," he said.
Mr McGuinness said his company has 'given up' work on the continent because of issues in ports like Calais.
"We were in a position where we'd be coming from the continent, Italy or Germany, and our drivers couldn't sleep on the road," he said.
"The curtains would be cut, fellas would jump in.
"You would be inspected by the French police, you would be inspected by the UK customs in Calais.
"Then if you get off the boat in Dover, if somebody had cut a whole in your trailer and got in unknownst... you were fined €2,000 for each man, woman and child.
"We'd have to drive literally from the German border non-stop to the boat and get straight on the boat.
"We gave up doing that work".
Mr McGuinness said they had "no back up from customs or police" if they found stowaways in their trailer.
'Drivers being threatened'
Irish Road Haulage Association President Ger Hyland said some drivers being threatened.
"There is wrong people in every profession, we don't have sight on too many of them lucky enough," he said.
"But what we are hearing is that there's drivers being threatened.
"If they pull in at services we have a checklist for them when come back out; they have to check seals, they have to check under their trucks.
"The migrants are coming in to the top of the trucks, they're boring holes in the top of the trailers, they're strapping themselves to the undercarriage of the vehicles, they're actually strapping themselves to axles."
'They try again in two days' time'
Mr Hyland wants to see more done by port police.
"Everybody has a part to play in this, not least the police in these ports of Dover and Calais, across the rest of Europe," he said.
"The migrants are a problem now in all these ports and they're seen as a problem to the authorities there.
"If there's migrants got in the port they're brought back out to the city limits and they're just dumped back out again.
"They make their way back into the ports and they try again in two days' time... they all seem to want to get the UK.
"Most of the migrants that has come into Ireland over the last number of years, once they realise where they are, they just seem to disappear off the face of the Earth.
"It's the UK that they're targeting," he added.
Mr Hyland said more needs to be done at local and EU-level to stop the practice.
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