Mr. Hugh Creegan:

The Deputy is not wasting his time. There will be movement. I will start off by saying that part of reason for the area knowledge test is that people do not want to get into a taxi at a rank and find out they are saying a well-known place but the driver has to look up Google Maps to know where it is. There is a balance there. We do have a local area hackney licence, which does not require any area knowledge tests but the take-up has not been strong on that. This is the one we are going to review. There is potential to do more on that. It will not require a local area knowledge test for the reasons the Deputy has said.

I wish to go back because I am just conscious I did not answer something the Deputy said earlier about the fares across rural Ireland. The national fare strategy was mentioned. Deputy Boland referred to it in relation to north Dublin. The intention is that later phases to that are going to correct the fare inequities that do exist across Ireland so we get to the stage - it will take a little bit of time - where the same journey in two different places will be equal and cost the same.

I will conclude on the hackneys. There is a local area hackney licence that does not require an area knowledge test at the moment. On the area knowledge test itself generally, we are reviewing this at the moment with the taxi advisory committee and whether, in this era of Google Maps, there could be a rebalancing of that. I think the answer is "Yes, there will have to be". We will recalibrate that. We are going to see if that local area hackney licence can be amended to make it more attractive to people. Very few people are taking it up at the moment.