Mr. Vinny Kearns:

I will address a few matters. I live in rural Ireland, in a village called Ballinellard in County Wexford, 25 km from Wexford town. I am 3.3 km from my local village. We have a service there which is very limited and really only operates at weekends.

The route is serviced by 12, 14 and 16-seater buses. As mentioned by Mr. O'Reilly, this service will be viable on the basis of capacity. Getting people home from the local pubs on Friday and Saturday nights is not an issue because there is not a huge population in my local town. One of the main issues for new entrants is the cost of insurance. For example, for a person aged 50 who may have driven a private car for 30 years, who is accident free, who has a full no claims bonus and who passes the PSV test to become a taxi driver, the minimum charge among the main insurance companies is €6,600 per annum. If that driver was unfortunate enough to have an accident, he or she would have to produce three letters of refusal to force an underwriter to give a quote. In that regard, I have seen quotes of €16,000 and €17,000. In the case of a driver who has been driving a taxi in Dublin for 20 years and has a full no claims bonus, the cheapest insurance available is €1,800 or €1,900. Insurance is a substantial cost. It is a complex issue. We appear to be moving closer to a solution but I do not think our proposal will resolve all of the issues. A working group should be established to examine best practice in other European jurisdictions. We do not need to reinvent the wheel. There are solutions out there. For example, integrated transport services, public and private, could be used to facilitate this service.

The issues of viability and subsidies were mentioned. Mr. O'Reilly has already addressed the issue of subsidies. The service will not operate if it is not viable. In the current economy we have close to full employment and so people are exiting rather than entering the taxi business. The average age of a taxi driver is 55 plus, which is not good for any workforce. We would welcome new entrants in order that we might increase our fleet and provide higher service levels across all taxi, hackney and chauffeur operations. In my area, the average fare is €5. Locals will not pay any more than that. The cost of a taxi for the same journey would be approximately €15. Private local services need to be subsidised to make them attractive to the user otherwise they will not be viable.

On monitoring, the NTA has a good enforcement team and the Garda have specialist units that are very well versed on PSV regulation so I think there is adequate resources to deal with that issue. In the context of Belmullet, the radius could be expanded for areas that need greater service provision. Deputy Michael Collins referred to recruitment and the retention of existing drivers. It is a big challenge for us. We have to be careful of the level of displacement that could be created by this service. The type of service we are proposing is restrictive in that it is addresses a specific need, which is transport to local villages and back. Drivers will not transport people to hospital appointments and wait around for two hours to bring them home. If they did, this would deprive other people of a service. I hope I have covered all of the questions.