Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

Is it not time the Minister told us where he stands on a moratorium on the issuing of taxi licences because he is the Minister who has presided over a collapse in standards and a free for all in the taxi industry? Many Deputies, particularly those on the transport committee, have been inundated with complaints about cloned vehicle licences, illegal licences of different kinds, drivers without the proper knowledge of the region in question, the poor state of vehicles, safety issues and, most recently, investigations by the media such as the Evening Herald and The Sunday Times into the ease with which one can legally buy a roof taxi sign or a full taxi package. Roof signs are only €180 approximately. There is a litany of abuses in the industry and at the same time the recent Goodbody report highlighted that the income of taxi workers has collapsed, down to approximately €11 an hour, which is just above the minimum wage, although drivers who are members of Taxi Drivers for Change and the taxi unions tell us that incomes have collapsed by anything from 25% to 40%.

It is very difficult for taxi workers to put bread on the table for their families. The Minister is presiding over that with an ineffective and failing taxi regulator who has now granted licences to almost 28,000 drivers and approved more than 27,000 vehicles in the case of this city. More licences are being issued for this city than for the city of New York with ten times the population. The Minister is presiding over that failure of regulation. On the regulator, for those 50,000 drivers there are only nine enforcement officers - nine inspectors for 50,000 workers. Is it not time the Minister stopped shilly-shallying and came forward with a moratorium?

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