Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I accept there needs to be a knowledge test and I should have said so at the outset. There needs to be a knowledge test and there needs to be standards. I also accept that the Minister of State's overall role is in policy.

One of the policy statements that could be made by the Department is that the test the NTA is imposing should reflect the area in which the person is expected to service. I go back to the person in Abbeyfeale who is applying for a licence. Half of his work could be essentially in County Kerry. I refer primarily to hackney drivers, as opposed to taxi-drivers, because there is no rank in County Limerick. There is nowhere for a taxi to stand in the county of Limerick. That person, as the matter currently stands, should tell a fare at Feale's Bridge to get out of the car as he or she cannot take him or her over the border into County Kerry. That is not living in the real world. The reality is these drivers have the knowledge of places along the Kerry border, such as Knocknagoshel, Brosna, Finuge, because that is the area in which they operate.

The NTA has also given me this lazy answer at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications. It states essentially that the NTA recognises there is a problem and up to 82% of applicants will not pass in a rural county. For instance, in a county such as Mayo, I wish good luck to one who is misfortunate enough to be out in Erris and hoping to apply for a taxi licence because he or she will never be able to pass the test as one is expected to know about places around Knock, Claremorris and Ballyhaunis. It is designed for the person to fail. In the case of my county, well over half of the questions relate to Limerick city, where a person will probably never serve because there are taxi ranks in place and hackney drivers will not get calls there. What the NTA has given the Minister of State by way of a response is what I have been getting by way of information at the committee for the past two years. They want to wash their hands of it and keep the current system that enforces a failure rate of upwards of 80% and does not recognise that in peripheral areas and county boundaries, hackney drivers cross into counties such as Kerry and Cork. They do not tell their fare at Rockchapel that they have to get out because they cannot drive over the border because their knowledge test only applies to Limerick. This is ridiculous. It bears no resemblance to what is happening on the ground.

I implore Deputy Kelly, as the Minister of State responsible for policy, to tell the NTA it is the policy of the Government that the knowledge test should reflect the area in which the person services, not a notional area called the county. If the latter is the case, the bigger the county, the greater the likelihood of one failing it. Deputy Kelly's county, like mine, is a case in point.

See this speech in context