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

The programme for Government was written when we were coming out of the Covid pandemic. Much of it dealt with economic recovery and the impact of Covid on particular groups of workers. One group that I campaigned and advocated for very strongly was taxi drivers. They last two years of work at the time. Following pleas from the taxi drivers, the Government conceded that those with cars reaching the ten-year replacement deadline during the pandemic would get an extension. Some of those who were reaching that deadline got an extension. I have raised this issue before. An anomaly has emerged for other people who were on the road with slightly newer cars but still lost two years of work. That means two years during which they could not finance the loans they had. They lost the same amount of income and were equally impacted. They are now facing having to take their cars off the road in January, even though they last two years of income. This is very urgent for them. I put a question to the Minister for Transport, Deputy Eamon Ryan, about this and he basically said he was not planning to do anything about it. That is wrong. Anybody who was on the road at the time lost two years of income. Their cars did not operate for two years, so it is legitimate that they would get an additional two years. In fact, there will be an anomaly where cars that are much older will still be on the road in 2027 because of the extension their owners got, whereas cars that are newer will be forced off the road. This is a very big financial issue for the taxi drivers involved. We are appealing that everybody who was on the road at the time get the two-year extension.

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