Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Insurance is a critical issue, on which reports from the Central Bank and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission will have a material bearing. The Government will have to assess those reports and act on them to bring down the cost of insurance for everyone.

With regard to the meeting with the taxi drivers and the range of issues that they rightly raised, the critical issues are the industry specific ones, including the lifetime of vehicles, access for taxis to bus lanes and protective measures within the cab. Those and the industry specific restart, credit and other support mechanisms are the issues on which I will have to focus.

On the characteristics of the pandemic unemployment payment as a universal social welfare payment, it would be difficult and possibly incorrect to start moving away from the universality of the social welfare system because we would end up with whole categories of people falling behind or losing out. That is not an easy adjustment to make for a specific industry. However, where there are industry specific measures we can take for taxi drivers, I will focus on those. Looking at future licensing applications and the types of vehicles and supports for that are where there is real potential for us to help the industry through this difficult time.

See this speech in context