Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

While I has intended to await the Minister of State's reply, I will just throw this point into the mix. The Minister of State has met representatives of the Taxi Alliance of Ireland, which has been lobbying on this Bill, and much of what I am about to say comes from that organisation. In the context of regulation, I share fully all the points that have been made about deregulation but for the record, there were 22,964 licences in existence in December 2012, which equates to one licence for every 200 of the country's population. In the case of Dublin, it equates to one licence for every 103 members of the population, as opposed to the position in County Tipperary, where there is one licence for every 557 members of the population.

The representatives suggested that there should be a strategy in existence for the provision of licences on the basis of the current population within each county and that perhaps might go towards explaining why the service can be poor to customers in certain geographic locations. The taxi alliance argues that it would make more sense for taxi drivers to operate within one county only, and that it should be enforced strongly. They also make a point about the split on licences between the different categories. The Minister will have an opinion on it. They again refer to Tipperary for obvious reasons. There are 212 hackney licences there compared with 36 taxi licences, and they say it does not seem to be correct. They recommend that the situation would be examined and that a strategy would be developed before the non-transferability of licences comes into effect so that licences can be purchased for those areas where there is a lack of them, especially in those circumstances where a taxi driver suffers from a long-term illness or death.

The final point is a stark one, namely, that the Dublin commuter belt accounts for 74% of all taxi licences. If one includes the cities of Galway, Cork and Limerick, they equate to 89% of all taxi licences across the country. I am inclined to sympathise with the view of taxi drivers that it is not a fair distribution to the other 16 counties and goes some way to explaining why there is so much illegal taxi activity, which is the point I tried to make on Second Stage. Illegal activity is taking place as much in rural areas as in urban areas. I am curious to hear whether the Minister of State has any comments to make in the context of the debate so far.