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

I absolutely commit to Deputy Smith to making all political efforts to improve rural taxi, hackney and, indeed, BusConnects services. This includes looking at the digital online app as part of Connecting Ireland. That will bring about improvements. It also includes working very closely with the likes of Local Link, which also provides a very significant local drop-off service. There is a whole variety of different services.

Deputy Ó Cuív is correct. The pilot scheme is only starting but, in reviewing it, we can see that it was too restrictive as regards the places in which it could be applied. That was done for a good reason in terms of not wanting to undermine existing services. As we come back for a second iteration, we might look towards a much more open scheme. As the Deputy has said, there were other conditions to the scheme to prevent competition with long-distance taxi services. That is an issue we should look at. We need to be much more open as regards the areas it may apply to.

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