Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with everything that has been said. We all accept our public transport system would not operate without taxi drivers. Taxi drivers feel they are the last to be considered in any way. Even when taxi drivers got back to work, elements of that work are no longer there to the same degree and that was before we were worried about Omicron and the current situation. The factory runs they would have done in the mornings as a considerable part of their work are not there due to the way people are remote working. We could not survive in relation to school runs and health and hospital runs. We can talk about all the necessary supports but taxi drivers are being refused the PUP. We are not putting those supports in. The idea of the supports was to keep those industries and families right through those periods so everybody could do the right thing from a health perspective. We need to ensure we have this service afterwards.

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