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

The taxi industry, like so many other sectors, has been hit by these high fuel prices, which is one of the reasons we introduced the 20 cent reduction on excise on petrol and the 15 cent reduction on excise on diesel. In the North it was something like 5 cent by comparison so it was not a small reduction. The other measure we carried out last year that was hugely successful, although people were sceptical at first, is that we provided some €50 million in grants for taxi drivers to switch to electric vehicles, which had a massive take-up. The issue with this was the supply of the vehicles, not the demand from the taxi drivers. Taxi drivers who have availed of it are seeing an incredible saving, particularly with the high fuel prices. I will look at various measures such as the one the Deputy has suggested but the best and most important way to help the taxi industry is to keep going with that switch to electric vehicles because the fuel costs are a fraction of that of petrol and diesel cars and the maintenance costs are much lower as well. They are better vehicles and that is how we might help.

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