Irish hauliers have called for a temporary relaxation of the rules on driving hours and rest times to address delays caused by the closure of Holyhead to be extended to the UK.
A derogation was signed into law by Minister for Transport Eamon Ryan and Minister of State for Transport James Lawless last night to allow them to drive longer with shorter breaks.
The weekly driving time will be limited to 60 hours, up from 56 hours, and a fortnightly limit of 102 hours will apply, up from 90 hours.
However, it only applies within the Irish State.
President of the Irish Road Haulage Association Ger Hyland said "unless we get a derogation on the far side (of the Irish Sea) its of no real benefit to us".
Read more: Reopening fears as photos show extent of Holyhead damage
"What we want is our department to go out tomorrow morning to their UK counterparts and get the same derogation as we here," he said.
Mr Hyland is meeting with Mr Ryan and Mr Lawless tomorrow where he will also raise "the lack of information" coming from Holyhead port since it was first damaged.
"Initially we were supposed to be up and running on Monday, then it was Tuesday now its Thursday of this coming week, we don't know, we're hearing rumours that its not going to happen on Thursday," Mr Hyland said.
"If it doesn't open on Thursday, you're into the New Year before it's opened" Mr Hyland said.
He said he remains concerned there will be "freight on both sides of the Irish Sea that is not going to make it" to its intended destination before Christmas.
"Come the middle of next week, we'll be competing with car traffic, with people looking to move to and fro between Ireland and England for the Christmas, and there's very limited availability at the present time and its going to be really compounded come the middle of next week," Mr Hyland said.
"It's taking between 24 and 48 hours extra to get from the UK back to Ireland now, the reason being we have a lot more travel to do now than we had when we were going to Holyhead port, we're going to Cairnryan [in Scotland] now and that's taken between five and eight hours drive to get us there," Mr Hyland said.
Mr Hyland also said that many eastern European drivers working in Ireland have gone or will be going back home for Christmas, which is also putting pressure on freight companies dealing with the ongoing delays.
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The berth is not expected to reopen before 20 December at the earliest.
The piece that has been damaged is a platform holding one of the dolphins which a ship uses as a buffer when it pulls alongside.
The Dublin to Holyhead route is a major transport link between Ireland and the UK, serving major cities in northern England such as Liverpool and Manchester.
Meanwhile, Mr Lawless is to meet Welsh Transport Secretary Ken Skates this evening to "explore all possible solutions to this problem through the use of alternative Welsh port".
Mr Ryan is due to hold a meeting with British Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander during the week.
An Post hoping to clear festive backlog
The Chief Executive of An Post has expressed confidence in the postal service to deliver packages despite the situation at the port.
David McRedmond said the backlog due to the closure of the port is now down to the last 16,000 parcels - which are currently en route.
He said An Post fully expect orders placed before Storm Darragh to be delivered, adding the postal service would be delivering 350,000 parcels tomorrow.
Mr Redmond said An Post can manage this capacity and will not need to ask hauliers to drive for longer periods over the Christmas period.
But, he warned people to be sceptical of the reopening time for Holyhead and that he was not expecting any traffic from Holyhead this side of Christmas.
He said there had been a lot of damage and some of it is under water.
An Post said additional capacity was created across all ferry lanes into Ireland due to the situation at Holyhead.
This added capacity, it said, has been achieved through the deployment of "larger vessels and additional sailings added to the schedule".
However, An Post warned that "some impacts will remain".
"There is a still some shortfall on what freight capacity would have been available into Ireland from Holyhead which had six sailings every 24 hours," it said.
"The alternate ports require great driving time so it takes more time to transit freight," it added.
Additional reporting Margaret Curley, Justin McCarthy
