Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I have been very interested in this side of rural transport for quite some time, particularly given the road traffic Bill that came before the Dáil. Deputy Troy said it is very positive that we are now speaking about rural transport. The mistake was that we should have spoken about it before the Bill went before the Dáil so we would not be fire fighting all the time. However, the Minister never understood what we explained to him from day one on the floor of the Dáil, that the Bill would cause a crisis in rural Ireland where there were already serious problems. He did throw a little sprinkle of money at Local Link but it was a cod, unfortunately, and we unravelled it in the Dáil. Then he threw more money at it. Again, it was not enough to touch the issue, which was the crisis being created in rural communities. I know there are shops and a number of other places where people want to go but the issue that hit the headlines was rural people wanting to go for a drink and go home, which they had been doing all their lives, but all of sudden they became criminals.

I have serious issues with the Uber-style transport service being spoken about.

I give credit where credit is due but my colleague in west Cork, the Minister of State, came up with this idea. The same Minister was putting it around in the newspapers that I was scaremongering and that there was no problem. He is now running around frantically trying to come up with a solution to that problem. He was like the Minister, Deputy Ross, and the rest. They were all jumping to support the Minister, Deputy Ross's Bill but unfortunately that was a mistake. I talk to a lot of taxi operators and they have very serious concerns. I agree with those concerns. I am open to correction, but I believe they have to replace their vehicles every ten years, which is a very stringent rule. Most taxi operators want to take on staff but for such staff to obtain a licence they have to go through an extremely rigorous test. They are asked silly questions that are totally irrelevant to what they have to do. We need to look at giving taxi operators the freedom to take on more staff. Surely if somebody has a licence to drive a 16-seat bus that person should be able to drive a taxi automatically. That could resolve many problems. At the moment such a person is not allowed, but if he or she was it could resolve a lot of problems and could create openings for taxi operators to employ people. That is what the operators are telling me in west Cork. I have to listen to the people on the ground.

We should not create another system that could result in an explosion of other problems in the future. That is what we have been doing on this issue. We have not been resolving anything; we have been creating more problems. We are talking about bringing in a new system which will put taxi operators out of business. People can argue the point that there are not enough taxis, but the operators are saying that licences to drive 16-seat buses should be good enough to allow one to drive a taxi. That would put a whole load of new drivers on the road straight away who could drive the taxis that are already in existence. They have all the rules and regulations. They are bent over backwards with rules and regulations which are costing them an absolute fortune and a system which I cannot understand is being brought in.

If Johnny is sitting by the fireside at home and Paddy six or seven miles down the road wants a spin to the post office - we always mention the pub, it could be the pub - he will leave his fireplace, take Paddy to the town, go home and leave Paddy there for an hour or two and then come back and collect him again. I presume it will be a fiver a whip or something like that. How is Johnny going to do that? He will have to be Garda vetted and I presume he will have to have some special type of insurance. Will ordinary car insurance do? Will he get a once-off grant? That would sort the issue for this year but in three or four years' time we will find that Johnny will not get out of his chair any more because it does not pay him to do so. Uber might work in cities. It has worked in the States - I have spoken to people who use it - but these places are highly populated. We hear about apps and so on but 90% of the people about whom we are talking only have a house telephone or an ordinary small mobile phone. Apps do not come into play. It might work in a city. The drivers will have special seven-seat, wheelchair accessible vehicles. Am I right in that? It is not going to work in rural Ireland.

We have existing taxi and hackney operators. They are paying through the nose. Perhaps it is these people the NTA should be looking at and making a contribution towards in order to see how they can survive, take on new drivers, and open up their operations more than they are able at the moment. There might then be an opportunity to see a way forward. The Uber-style system being touted is a sop to cod the people of rural Ireland but the people of rural Ireland will not be codded because they are fairly cute. They know what will work and what will not. Unfortunately, this is not going to work.