Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The objective from this side is to have a Bill embodying any wisdom we can give to the Minister, but the choice is for the Minister of State to make, because we recognise who he is.

Section 7(4) states "The Authority, in making regulations under this section, may set different requirements and conditions", and then lists several, which we are not commenting on because they are accepted, those relating to including small public service vehicles and certain drivers and licences. Section 7(4)(b) relates to "different circumstances". The request is that these be specified. Is it too broad a power? We may have asked if this could be considered on Report Stage. The notion is rather broad; everything happens in different circumstances.

Section 7(4)(c) mentions "different areas of the State". I feel stronger about pressing this deletion because we abolished different areas of the State for the taxi sector. The entire country was deregulated, mostly due to the decision of Mr. Justice Roderick Murphy, but it was upheld in three other High Court decisions emanating from Mr. Justice Paul Carney, who did the judicial review of the Murphy decision, Mr. Justice Hugh Geoghegan and Mr. Justice Declan Costello. I am unsure why we are trying to reintroduce area licensing. The courts deregulated the sector for the entire country and the section seems to contradict that decision. The decision of Mr. Justice Roderick Murphy meant that people have the right to enter a sector for which they have the skills and training and that the public has a right to the services of such people. There were two addendums to the judgment: first, that the idea of restricting entry contradicted the notion of public service; and second, a warning that most of the people in the then system, on the inside of an insider-outsider system, were citizens of this State, while in a single European market most of the people outside were probably not Irish and in this way we were probably contravening European law in persisting with the previous system, under which the issuing of licences was confined to incumbents, with a minuscule number for others.

Entry to the sector nationally was opened up by that decision. I am informed by the legal people whom I consult on occasion that it is not permissible to introduce in a Bill something that is at variance with or seeks to contradict a court ruling.

It was pointed out in our last discussion that some parts of the country are perceived to have a shortage of taxis on the open market. The entire country has seen a large increase in the number of taxis since the courts opened the market for us. The increase in taxi numbers outside Dublin was larger than within the city. I tried to relate the current stock of small public vehicles in the province of Leinster to the population figures recorded in the latest census. They do not seem to follow any particular pattern. I do not know what problem this is supposed to address. The results differ for counties Carlow, Laois and Kilkenny but a taxi can easily travel between these counties.

I do not see the point of this section and my legal advice is that it will contravene what the courts decided when they opened the entire country to the market. I do not see any flaw in the working out of that decision and I do not understand how restricting the numbers or confining them to particular geographic locations agrees with the decision of the High Court. We are compelled to avoid a situation where, due to mistakes made between the late 1970s and 2000, pieces of paper called taxi licences acquired values of ¤100,000 or more because we did not issue enough of them. All of the partial deregulation schemes proved to be far less radical than what actually happened in the market and I look askance at any attempt to unpick a decision of the High Court backed by three other decisions. What is the point of area licensing and does it contradict the aforementioned decisions?