Mr. Gerard Macken:

There was a large increase in the number of people requiring credit card machines and some people have come more to the fore in this regard, building packages around the taxi industry. We worked strongly with Dublin Airport on this as well but we are now being ignored altogether. The biggest concern from a taxi perspective is that the National Transport Authority wants us to pay for everything while we get nothing back, which would not work in any industry. It is working now because there are no charges for the likes of Visa and Mastercard and drivers can facilitate a small charge with corporate commercial business cards and cards outside of Europe. This is a legal entitlement arising from direction of the National Transport Authority but the authority wants to take that away and leave us with no way of recouping the money. Nobody I know has a major issue with recouping a couple of cent for providing a service. It should continue this way.

The Deputy has noticed a bigger uptake because taxi representative groups have been part of ensuring driver safety is paramount and that contactless payment can be facilitated as much as possible through working with credit card companies. More of them are coming on board and trying to facilitate the taxi industry.