Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting the matter of the industry knowledge test for small public service vehicles for discussion. I regret I have had to raise it as a Topical Issues matter but I have already raised it umpteen times through parliamentary questions, as well as at the Oireachtas transport committee, but the replies have been wholly unsatisfactory. This is a significant issue, particularly in rural areas, as many applying for SPSV licences fail the knowledge test. The knowledge test does not take into consideration where the applicant hopes to operate the licence. Instead, it takes into account a notional area of each county.

If one comes from a county the size of Cork, one will have the misfortune of having a high chance of failing the knowledge test even before sitting it. For example, an applicant from Bantry, County Cork, could be faced with the question, “On which street in Mitchelstown, County Cork, is the post office?” An applicant from Kilbeheny, County Limerick, two miles over the road from Mitchelstown, will not be asked that question when doing the Limerick knowledge test even though he or she will be operating in an area that could encompass Kilbeheny, Cahir, County Tipperary, and Mitchelstown.

The National Transport Authority, NTA, fails to recognise the taxi industry knowledge tests bear no resemblance to the areas they are expected to cover. When I have raised this several times at the Oireachtas transport committee, I have used the example of a person applying for a test in Shannon Banks, County Clare. This is essentially a suburb of Limerick city and the applicant would be carrying out most work there. However, will the knowledge test ask the applicant about Corbally, Roches Street, Ballycummin, Raheen or Dooradoyle? No, it will ask about Lisdoonvarna, Kilrush and Kilkee, bearing no resemblance to the area in which the SPSV will cover.

Accordingly, in 2012, in Cork, 225 sat the knowledge test with 186, 82%, failing it. In Limerick, 83 sat the test and 60, 72%, failed it. In Mayo, 19 sat the test but 78% failed it. In Tipperary, 21 people sat the test but 72% of them failed. In the Minister of State’s area of Killaloe, County Clare, and Ballina, County Tipperary, an applicant would be expected to know about places from where Deputy Mattie McGrath comes, down in the Knockmealdown Mountains.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)
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We know our way around.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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It might be far more important for an applicant from the Minister’s area to know about O’Brien’s Bridge or Ardnacrusha, County Clare, or Montpelier, County Limerick, than it would be to know about places in south Tipperary that he or she will never service.

There is a hands-over-the-ears mentality in the NTA. It does not understand there are jobs being put at stake. When I raised this with the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, it replied that where there is a glaring lack of hackney drivers in rural areas, it will set up a new licence rather than addressing the fact that the knowledge test is designed for people to fail, particularly if one comes from a large county or a peripheral area like I do in west Limerick. God help the applicant in Athea, Glin or Abbeyfeale trying to pass the Limerick knowledge test. One of the questions on the test, which I have seen, asks on what street in Doon, County Limerick, is the post office. No one from Abbeyfeale will know that.

Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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That post office there is closed now.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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Invariably the test is designed for failure. I accept a rural hackney licence has been brought in but the reason for that is because the NTA will simply not change the knowledge test to allow a person to be tested on the area in which they cover rather than the overall county from which they come.

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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The regulation of the SPSV industry, including the operation of the area knowledge test and SPSV skills development programme, is a matter for the NTA under the provisions of the Taxi Regulation Act 2013. My role relates to the overall policy for the sector. There have been many changes to the SPSV policy framework in recent years through the implementation of the recommendations of the taxi regulation review report 2011 and the introduction of the Taxi Regulation Act 2013. These initiatives provide a foundation for a better quality taxi industry.

The SPSV entry test is designed to confirm the candidates understanding of the SPSV regulations, industry and consumer service standards, as well as knowledge of the county in which the candidate intends to operate. The test includes two modules: the industry knowledge module and the area knowledge module. Both must be passed before an application can be granted by An Garda Síochána.

The area knowledge module consists of 36 questions in the SPSV entry test. Each county in the State comprises a separate area for the purposes of SPSV driver licensing. In the case of taxi drivers, the taxi driver can only stand or ply for hire in a county in which he or she is authorised to operate. For recent and new entrants to the SPSV industry, that authorisation means successfully completing the area knowledge test related to the particular county. Within a county, the candidate may be asked questions on various locations, routes in the county or key destinations immediately adjoining the county boundary. This reflects the fact that, if successful, the licenceholder will be entitled to provide taxi services at any location in that county.

The rationale for the area knowledge module of the SPSV entry test is the establishment of a suitable standard of area knowledge for drivers of small public service vehicles in order to ensure an appropriate quality of service to passengers. This is an approach used in many jurisdictions throughout the world, not only in Ireland.

For many years, the area authorisation arrangements have been based on the county system, with a specific area knowledge test for each county in Ireland. For an applicant intending to operate a taxi, he or she is then required to place his or her authorised county designation on his or her roof sign. It would be possible to subdivide county designations to smaller geographic areas and to tailor area knowledge tests to relate to those smaller area designations. However, there are issues that arise with such an approach. Taxis are only allowed to stand at ranks or pick up on-street in areas in respect of which they are authorised under their licence. For all recent entrants to the industry, that has meant passing the relevant area knowledge test.

While not claiming that the county system is perfect - know it is not - it has the benefit of simplicity and clarity. Alternative systems could prove to provide even more issues. The boundary of a county is a recognisable concept that is understood by everybody. Operating a system of multiple areas within a county creates the challenge of defining clearly the area authorised in each case and making that clearly and intuitively understandable. While defining boundaries based on maps can be developed, it is difficult to make this easily understandable in a simple intuitive way, and to communicate that clearly on the vehicle.

A further concern would arise in regard to enforcement issues. Arising from the issue of clarity of operational areas, the enforcement of a sub-divided area system would become much more complex and difficult than it is at present. The simplicity of finding a person standing for hire in a taxi in county A when he or she only has an authorisation for county B would be removed. Clarity would need to be obtained by the relevant Garda or compliance officer suspecting this as to the actual area designation for which the driver is authorised - it would no longer be governed by the simple, definable county boundaries. It is likely to require map-based information to fully inform of the county sub-division areas. For a Garda involved in small public service vehicle prosecutions on an infrequent intermittent basis, this lack of simplicity and clarity will be a disincentive to detection and prosecution.

There would also be cost implications in having tests for smaller areas. Currently the cost of an area knowledge test is €90 per test, reflecting the cost to the National Transport Authority of carrying out the test. If successfully passed, it authorises the successful person to stand or ply for hire at any location within the county of authorisation. As identified earlier, many taxi operators are unlikely to wish to pick up passengers on-street at several locations in a county and, under the suggested alternative system, would have to pay and take several additional area knowledge tests to achieve this, thereby increasing their costs.

While I acknowledge that the current area knowledge test has limitations, it represents a reasonable mechanism to establish an appropriate standard of geographic knowledge to be attained by drivers of small public service vehicles. The sub-division of the current county structure into smaller zones would undoubtedly make it easier to pass the revised and more localised test. However, it has several disadvantages associated with it, including enforcement challenges, lack of clarity on area knowledge, signage for taxis, cost burden and potential passenger perception issues. Overall, it is considered that the division of operational areas into a sub-county structure would create significant difficulties which would greatly out-weigh the benefits of such an approach.

Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I accept there needs to be a knowledge test and I should have said so at the outset. There needs to be a knowledge test and there needs to be standards. I also accept that the Minister of State's overall role is in policy.

One of the policy statements that could be made by the Department is that the test the NTA is imposing should reflect the area in which the person is expected to service. I go back to the person in Abbeyfeale who is applying for a licence. Half of his work could be essentially in County Kerry. I refer primarily to hackney drivers, as opposed to taxi-drivers, because there is no rank in County Limerick. There is nowhere for a taxi to stand in the county of Limerick. That person, as the matter currently stands, should tell a fare at Feale's Bridge to get out of the car as he or she cannot take him or her over the border into County Kerry. That is not living in the real world. The reality is these drivers have the knowledge of places along the Kerry border, such as Knocknagoshel, Brosna, Finuge, because that is the area in which they operate.

The NTA has also given me this lazy answer at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications. It states essentially that the NTA recognises there is a problem and up to 82% of applicants will not pass in a rural county. For instance, in a county such as Mayo, I wish good luck to one who is misfortunate enough to be out in Erris and hoping to apply for a taxi licence because he or she will never be able to pass the test as one is expected to know about places around Knock, Claremorris and Ballyhaunis. It is designed for the person to fail. In the case of my county, well over half of the questions relate to Limerick city, where a person will probably never serve because there are taxi ranks in place and hackney drivers will not get calls there. What the NTA has given the Minister of State by way of a response is what I have been getting by way of information at the committee for the past two years. They want to wash their hands of it and keep the current system that enforces a failure rate of upwards of 80% and does not recognise that in peripheral areas and county boundaries, hackney drivers cross into counties such as Kerry and Cork. They do not tell their fare at Rockchapel that they have to get out because they cannot drive over the border because their knowledge test only applies to Limerick. This is ridiculous. It bears no resemblance to what is happening on the ground.

I implore Deputy Kelly, as the Minister of State responsible for policy, to tell the NTA it is the policy of the Government that the knowledge test should reflect the area in which the person services, not a notional area called the county. If the latter is the case, the bigger the county, the greater the likelihood of one failing it. Deputy Kelly's county, like mine, is a case in point.

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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First, the NTA does not write my speeches. Second, the issue in regard to the failure rate is not only one for rural counties.

Third, one need not drop anyone at any border because Ireland operates as a full taxi-meter country. The issue in that regard is the area where a taxi or hackney driver can ply for hire. From an administration point of view, for the enforcement, especially by the gardaí and enforcement officers, we must have a clearly identifiable way of knowing whether, for example, taxi-drivers from Dublin are operating in these areas and effectively taking the food out of the mouths of those in for example, County Galway - at, say, the Galway races - or in any other location.

There was an issue down through the years where there were many drivers getting licences. I inherited a sector where, as I have stated on many occasions, there were drivers who got licences who simply should not have because the test was not good enough. In fact, the test was very weak. I cannot believe some of the drivers who I travel with passed this test. I do not know how they did so and I suppose at this stage I am not sure whether I will ever find out. How some drivers, particularly operating taxis in Dublin, got past an area knowledge test is beyond me. I wanted to change that and I have ensured that it is changed.

Given what I outlined earlier, any system one creates like this cannot be perfect but there are a number of issues here. For starters, we must have some form of administration unit that works and that is recognisable by the Garda so that there can be fair play where licence holders operate in a certain district, and that is where we know they can ply for hire even though it is a full taxi-meter country.

Second, in regard to the specific test, in certain counties where there are not enough taxis and hackneys, I have instructed the NTA to look at slightly changing the test to make it a little easier, potentially where there is market failure. They are always looking at the test but there are significant administrative issues which I have outlined and we must work closely with the Garda to ensure gardaí are in a position to do its job.

Finally, as Deputy O'Donovan stated, there is an alternative licence put in place. It is a good licence. It is a local area licence which by-passes many of the issues about which we spoke. To date, unfortunately, not one person in the Deputy's county has applied for one. I would welcome if persons would apply for those licences because within the villages in which Deputy O'Donovan and I operate, such licences will be welcome.