Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I think some of the cost factors that have been gone through today are for the Minister and the Department to properly look at and to resolve, and there is an upcoming budget, but there are things our committee, I think, could action. I refer to the suggestion that in an urban environment a certain protection is given to the taxi rank, wherever it might be, whether Dublin city, Ennis or Limerick. The whole move over the past three years has been towards cycleways, active travel and so on. It just seems to me that the taxi rank is lost within that equation. E-scooters and rental bikes are fine, but coming out of a pub or nightclub at 1.30 a.m. people are not going to get e-scooters home. On a rainy winter's night it is the taxi we have always gone home in. It is the safest and the quickest way home and keeps you dry until you get to bed. They need to be protected. Maybe our committee could recommend that to the NTA on foot of everything the witnesses have said, and that ranks become permanent structures. Nearly every city centre and town centre now is being overhauled with paving schemes. An accommodation needs to be given more permanently to the taxi drivers.