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

I sympathise with the thrust of the amendment. As I indicated, the reason I did not press the issue of full-time taxi drivers is there is a legitimate point on rural areas where the scenario is different and the Minister of State accepts this point. In this context, I wish to raise another issue which points a little in the other direction. It does not counter what Deputy Denis Naughten stated, with which I agree and support, but there are suggestions, reports and anecdotal evidence that some transport services which benefit from the rural transport scheme use these supports to make incursions into urban areas. I do not know whether this is true. I have not seen the hard evidence, but I have heard reports that people operating services and competing with taxis in urban areas benefit from grants under the rural transport scheme. Will the Minister of State examine this issue and see whether there is evidence that this might be the case, which would obviously be an abuse of the supports and unfair to taxi drivers in urban areas? Setting this point aside, I believe Deputy Denis Naughten's amendment is reasonable with regard to other matters with which the Bill is trying to deal.

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