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

I was just talking to one of the leaders of a taxi representative group just now. He spoke of a taxi driver who looked for a loan from the bank of €5,000 and was refused. Why was that? It was because when the banks look at the situation of the taxi industry as it is now, they know there is no work and no income. As a result, they think that those applying for even €5,000 loans must be joking and they are refusing to loan even those amounts. How then are the individual taxi drivers supposed to get €25,000, which is the amount needed to buy an electric, wheelchair-accessible vehicle costing about €50,000? The grants are only at about €20,000, so these drivers cannot manage to do this.

On top of everything else, they have clocked up debts for car repayments and similar costs. An extension has not been rolled over for those whose cars will no longer meet the ten-year rule this year. Therefore, the grants are not enough to sustain people and the vast majority will not be able to access the grants and make up that sort of difference. What those drivers are telling me is that it is the taxi companies that will be able to afford these costs and it is those companies that are applying for those grants. The taxi representative groups are also very dissatisfied with the taxi advisory committee and do not want to be part of it because they cannot get their message directly through to the Minister and his Department.

See this speech in context