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

I thank the Regional Group for bringing forward the motion to discuss SMEs and the supports they need. The first thing I want to do is to advocate on behalf of the 26,000 small enterprises who are the taxi drivers of this country. They are very concerned, at the moment, about moves to deregulate the taxi industry that are being spearheaded by some other SMEs that - do not get me wrong - have a legitimate concern, specifically those in the pub trade, restaurants, night entertainment and so on, who have teamed up with Uber and some of these other ride-hailing app people to argue that there is a chronic shortage of taxis and that effectively we need to introduce the Uber-type model for taxis, where anybody can be a taxi driver and where there is complete deregulation. The taxi drivers - 26,000 of them and their families - are very concerned. I agree with them that this is not the way to go. First, huge numbers of those taxi drivers have invested large amounts of money in buying new taxis, often electric vehicles, and they have big loans with the banks. If there is wholesale deregulation of the taxi industry, that will seriously impact on their ability to make a living and, therefore, their ability to pay back loans, which are very large loans in many cases, for expensive new taxis. We should not go down that road.

Linked to that, we should also not lower the entry requirements for going into the taxi industry because when people get into a taxi, they need to know they are going to be safe. They need to know they are in a properly regulated taxi with somebody who knows the business, knows the area and is not just somebody who can put themselves on an Uber app with the potential danger that they do not really know who is driving them and so on. That is important. The taxi drivers would say that some of the figures being put out by Uber and some of the others about the chronic shortage taxis are inaccurate. Apparently, FREENOW has very different figures on the availability of taxis. It is certainly the case that at certain times we see long lines of taxis waiting long periods to pick up a fare. The taxi drivers admit that there are pinch points at particular times of the day, or particularly at night. How do we address that? It is unfair to put the burden of solving that problem solely on the shoulders of taxi drivers. We need more frequent or expanded public transport and bus services at night, which can help the small businesses that depend on night time trade but not put an excessive burden on taxi drivers to fill a gap in the provision of late night transport. The other thing is that taxi drivers will point out their safety concerns. Many taxi drivers do not like driving at night because they are worried about their personal safety. It is up to the Government to address those safety concerns but deregulating the taxi industry is not is not the way forward. Critically, the Government, the National Transport Authority and anybody who is looking at this issue needs to engage with the taxi drivers and treat them with respect. The last time we had deregulation of the taxi industry, it was a total disaster for taxi drivers and it should not happen again.

The second group I want to advocate for consists of our many actors, musicians, performers, dancers, writers and directors, of which there are tens of thousands, who have helped contribute to the culture and music of this country - things we often take for granted. They are mostly sole traders. They have a very precarious existence, going from gig to gig, and very a poor income in many cases. Most of our artists and the people who contribute to the films that we see on television or who work in music live in poverty and in very precarious circumstances. They need more support. I believe that the basic income for artists should be extended to all those who work in the in the arts. It is also critically important that the Government addresses the copyright issue in terms of intellectual property rights and royalties - in other words, for writers, directors, actors and so on who are being robbed of the royalties they should get for their performances. They get paid for making a television programme or whatever but then the producers run off of the royalties when the same thing is distributed on Netflix or whatever it is, and they are not getting paid. That is a breach of the copyright directive. The use of buy-out contracts being enforced on writers, directors and performers by producer companies has to stop. It is contrary to the copyright directive, it is contrary to the law and it is an abuse and exploitation of our writers, actors, performers, dancers, musicians, composers and so on. I ask the Government to seriously examine that.

Generally, there are some people who rightly want to be small businesses, loan traders and so on. There are other people who are wrongly classified as those things because it suits their employers not to give them proper jobs. That is widespread in a whole number of industries. The arts is another area where it is widespread. If you want to be a small business, that is fine, but if you are actually an employee who is clocking in from nine to five and working from the same person again and again, even if it is episodic or in the gig economy, you should be classified as an employee so that you get your holiday entitlements, sick pay, pension rights and so on and so forth.

My last point is on the generality of SMEs. When small and medium enterprise owners come to me, their concern is rates. It is one of the big concerns. It is not fair that a small café pays the same rates, per square metre of the business, as a bank that is making billions of euro in profits. We should have a differential scheme of rates based on revenue and profits, and not one whereby the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker are paying the same level of rates as huge chains and banks that are making enormous profits. I also believe that we need a not-for-profit insurance company that provides insurance that is actually affordable for small and medium enterprises. Finally, we have to do something about massive rent increases for small businesses that can often put them out of business at a stroke.

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