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

I have raised the plight of taxi drivers with the Taoiseach many times. They were hit very hard during the pandemic. Taxi drivers also have a key role to play in the decarbonisation of transport. Some €15 million was allocated after some big protests by taxi drivers during the period of Covid for grants to be available to them to get electric cars. To their disappointment and surprise in recent weeks, they were told that although only €6 million out of the €15 million grant scheme has been used up, no further applications are being accepted. That is inexplicable if we want to see the decarbonisation of the taxi fleet. Also, bizarrely, if people had committed to buy an electric vehicle that was worth more than €60,000, there would be an extension on the grant being available to them until March of next year, but if a commitment had been made to purchase a vehicle worth less than €60,000, it would not. That is bizarre.

I also understand, for some inexplicable reason, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, grants for taxi drivers have a similar threshold of €60,000 in order to get a €2,500 grant. You get the money if you are a rich taxi driver who can afford a very expensive electric car, but not if the car is worth less than €60,000. Could the Taoiseach confirm that the scheme will be reopened, that the €9 million that was not spent will be carried over to next year, that there will be an additional allocation and that the arbitrary thresholds of €60,000 will be removed?

The public transport bus drivers who voted against the National Transport Authority, NTA, and Dublin Bus proposals on changing their routes and significantly undermining their existing working conditions are asking if the NTA has learnt anything from the vote. In particular, they ask if it understands that facilitating the race to the bottom, where privatised operators are undermining the conditions of bus workers in terms of their work-life balance, hours of work and so on, is the last direction in which they want to go.

2 o’clock

If we want to expand public transport, we need to protect the working conditions of bus drivers and end the privatisation of routes. We need a public system where workers' conditions are protected and where we expand the routes available to people.

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