Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Minister of State has. I am not disputing that. I have also been quite involved in this issue over the years. I marched in the protest against deregulation, not because I did not recognise the need for more taxis but because the taxi drivers who marched against deregulation warned what would happen, and they were correct. Subsequently, I have joined many campaigns, protests and demonstrations by groups such as Taxi Drivers for Change, which has morphed into another group. For the majority of my engagement with those taxi drivers groups over the years, I have found them to be sane and sensible people making reasonable points, most if not all of which have been vindicated, about the anarchy that ensued from deregulation and the need for proper regulation and enforcement.

I welcome that we have finally reached this point but, as I stated, there are a number of concerns, and I hope the Minister will engage with those concerns over the course of the passage of this legislation through the House. The first concern raised was about the consultation process, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister of State has to say in response. There may be competing claims about which is the biggest group - there are an array of groups representing taxi drivers - but I have known for quite a few years those members of the NPHTA to whom I spoke. They were involved with Taxi Drivers for Change. I believe their account to be reasonably credible as to what the NPHTA represents. They state they are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, representative organisations of taxi drivers. Representing in the region of 6,000 taxi drivers certainly makes them one of the biggest. While they were initially on the review group, they were removed from that group because they were unhappy, I presume, with certain proposals, or they were not accepting of certain consensus positions. Am I correct in stating that Tiománaí Tacsaí na hÉireann was not on the group?

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