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

While I do not want to be too dogmatic in my response, at the same time these measures were introduced during Covid, correctly to my mind. We are now coming out of it, touch wood and please God, and it is appropriate to return to those standards. We have extended the grants that we introduced for the electrification of the taxi fleet because that will bring real benefits and will help people to make that switch.

It is important to look at some of the statistics on the SPSV fleet. There were some 21,000 SPSVs before Covid and that has dropped to 18,946, 85% of which are less than ten years old. Some of the 15% that are more than ten years old are related to the fact that the age restriction was lifted during Covid but there are also some vehicles that have a longer licensed age. Before Covid, about half of the vehicles were five years old or less but that has now dropped to 35%. There is an issue here. SPSVs do a very large amount of mileage and there is an issue if the vehicle is ten, 11 or 12 years old. It is an issue for the customer as well as for the driver. There are much higher costs associated with running older vehicles and it makes sense to go back to the ten-year rule.

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