Ms Wendy Thompson:

On the taxis at the airport, we work very closely with the airport police and have given the airport police officers training in this. Apart from anything, it is a private area and we do not have the same rights as the NTA compliance teams to do exactly what we want. One thing we can do is issue the fixed penalty notices for this, but there are many other aspects. Strict refusals are one thing - I know that is what the Deputy is talking about here – but for many other complaints we do not so we work very closely with them.

On support for disabled passengers, that is where we would have our own compliance officers physically at the airport for all incoming early flights and other peak times during the day so that we can see what is going on, if that is happening. There are also all the different ways by which someone can make a complaint. That can be done through the roof sign number or the registration number. Someone can use the Driver Check app in order to find out the full details of the individual and work out how to complain. That is as well as ourselves and as well as the airport police.

We do monitor it. Where we find that someone has, for instance, we gave 36 fixed penalty notices last year for refusals. We had a difficulty last year because some refusals were not for wheelchair accessible and some were. We worked with that but it has been ironed out now. We sometimes find that a driver is a repeat offender, has not understood what we have said to him and might be paying the fine and going about his business. This was before we increased the fine to €250 and brought all the prosecutions. In that case we get the Garda Commissioner, who is the suitability assessment person, to delegate one of his superintendents to interview the individual, quite apart from ourselves doing it, to assess their suitability to hold their licence at all, given their legal and social duties.

The Deputy mentioned grants. There is a three-year service period for each of those grants and monthly journey forms have to be submitted to ourselves. We use mystery shopping and so on as well as the journey forms. We do claw back the grant. We have people in debt collection specifically to claw back the grant where that service is not being provided, where we have complaints.

In order to get a grant in the first place, you cannot have had a fine or a successful prosecution, whether that involved a conviction, a fine, paying money to the Little Dinners or whatever. They cannot get a grant at all. That is something we will look at.

As well as having our complaint form on the wheelchair accessible vehicle register, to which wheelchair accessible groups, including the Irish Wheelchair Association, send all of their members and which is consistently publicised, we also have a different web form. It can be done by phone, letter or to the compliance people, anonymously or with a name. When it is done anonymously, there is very little we can do other than investigate if more has happened or if there is any previous. We find our passengers with disabilities are very good at giving their name and helping and assisting us, and the dispatch operators the same.

We have both overt and covert presence at the airport. Sometimes people who have disabilities send a friend out first to book the taxi and say their friend is coming, and then the friend comes in their wheelchair. That is totally unacceptable. That is one thing we use to check on night runs and so on. We put ourselves, to the best of our limited ability, in the wheelchair user's shoes when trying to get a taxi. We are our own mystery shoppers. We have spoken with the Irish Wheelchair Association to get a scheme running with wheelchair users doing that for us when they need to go somewhere and then tell us much more about it. That is our monitoring.