Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I fully support the motion before the House today because it is reasonable. I also support the amendment proposed by People Before Profit because the motion and the amendment combined would make a huge difference to many working lives across the State and would make very little difference to public finances and to the State. Those should be the criteria used by the Government in deciding whether to go along with the measures.

There was the excuse at the start of the lockdown that this was a knee-jerk reaction and we had to act quickly. The State had to respond quickly and of course mistakes were made but we have done it now. We are now months into it and gearing up for a period of prolonged lockdown. The State should be able to respond now and it is not enough to say the State cannot do it. The State should be able to respond fully and only by that response will the State preserve enough of a functioning economy and business sector to have something to come back to in the future. That needs to happen.

The people left behind in the original changes during the lockdown, such as taxi drivers and arts workers, are the people who should be looked after now. It is by protecting them that the State ensures they carry on into the future. Measures such as the introduction of a moratorium on new taxi licences make perfect sense. For the next year or so, no more licences should be renewed. The work is not there, so why would the Government do it? The extension for vehicles is reasonable as well and makes perfect sense. With the NCT, if a vehicle is deemed roadworthy, it should be roadworthy to be used as a taxi as well. People Before Profit's amendment proposing a taxi buy-back scheme to allow taxi drivers to exit the industry is perfectly reasonable. Those things should be considered and done by the Government straight away to ensure the taxi industry survives and people survive.

It has been mentioned by other Members that we are talking about families and maintaining family incomes into the future. In rural Ireland, very often the people with the taxi or hackney licences also provide school buses and bus transport. They have been hit right across the board in relation to the changes made to transport and having to deal with the uncertainty of that alongside the uncertainty with this business. It is mounting uncertainty across the board for these people and the Government needs to respond in a positive way to ensure they can continue their business with some certainty. These proposals will do that.

It is pointless asking this but I will ask anyway. I ask the Government to take it on board and have a meaningful motion passed here today, rather than the Government amendment, which is designed just to make the Government look good and have that on the record of the Dáil. This motion has been put forward in a spirit of wanting to do the best for everybody and it is a chance for the Dáil to come together, adopt the measures and ensure this happens to benefit the people who need it. It will also send out a positive signal from the Government, which has had a few hectic days, weeks and months on an ongoing basis, due to bad decisions and not making decisions properly. This is a good decision that the Government can make to make a difference to people's lives.

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