Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. On amendment No. 66, my intention was to praise the Minister of State. I was at the meetings of the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications attended by the new chairman of Shannon Airport and the new chairman of the Port of Cork. It is a suggestion this appears to work and if the Minister of State thinks it is a good idea, it might also apply in this case.

I will leave that to him to address.

With regard to amendments Nos. 67, 68 and 69, my concerns remain. They are expressed most strongly in Mr. Paul Gorecki's recent paper on this subject, published by the ESRI. The use of SI No. 250 of 2010 to overturn four High Court decisions was inappropriate. I refer to one's ability to enter the industry if one has the necessary skills and training. We risk the same fate as was evident in the Supreme Court last Thursday regarding the control of electricians. The incumbents were judged by the Supreme Court to have far too much say. We checked the records today. SI No. 250, which reimposes quantity licensing, was never discussed by the Oireachtas. It is part of the judgment that the Supreme Court gave against similar arrangements with regard to electricians. It is stated the function of legislation cannot be delegated by the Oireachtas to any other body. What occurred was a deliberate attempt to overturn the High Court decision on open entry to the sector. It has not been discussed in the House. The ban has been maintained with the 91% capital cost disadvantage and the 27% running disadvantage. There is a four-year delay in getting cases to the Supreme Court. My legal advice is that it was wrong that a statutory instrument was used to overturn a court decision. The Minister should have appealed the High Court decision to the Supreme Court and allowed the legal issues to be worked out there.

Sufficient regard has not been had to competition law. It illustrates regulatory capture. One could count the number of times the Minister of State said the taxi industry told him to do this or that, but he never made any reference in any of his speeches to the fact that the independent evaluation showed €780 million in benefits from opening up the taxi industry. As frequently happens in Ireland, the sector is frequently dominated by the producers, and the consumers are excluded and not being heard.

The Minister of State referred to alaissez-faireregime applying. That has very obviously not been the case before this Bill. If one takes the previous regulator's speech in Lisbon on 13 July 2010, one will note she listed item after item of regulatory developments. Page 6 of her speech referred to ten quality improvements made under her term in office. Page seven lists another five, page 8 contains another 15, and page nine contains another five. What the regulator did and what the Goodbody report stated have received pretty short shrift in these proceedings. Let me describe what the Minister of State considers alaissez-faireregime. The previous regulator's document states:

- national taximeter area introduced
- national maximum taxi fare […]
- national vehicle licensing system - one vehicle, one licence
- colour coded tamper proof discs
- requirement to issue receipts
- requirement to carry guide dogs
- requirement not to unreasonably refuse fares of 30 km or under
- roof sign requirements clarified
- vehicle standard requirements- National and secure driver identification cards introduced
- National register of vehicle, driver and dispatch operator licences established and maintained
- Dispatch operator licensing system introduced.
- Wheelchair accessible vehicle register established
- Joint administration of the driver licensing process with An Garda Síochána. […]

With regard to compliance, the document states:

- Dedicated enforcement team
- Fixed charge penalty system
- National prosecutions function
- Joint operations with other enforcement agencies
- Consumer complaints investigated
- Collect and disseminate statistical data relating to compliance levels in the SPSV industry in Ireland.

On quality standards, reference is made to vehicle standards having been introduced for new entrants since 2009 and to a skills development programme having been introduced in May 2009. On examining the list, one will realise it was not alaissez-faireindustry; it was being regulated. The difference recently has been the reintroduction of quantity licensing. The industry is captured by the producers, who dominate the committee and Department. The Department has spent a lifetime preventing competition - in the bus sector, for example.

The justification given by the Minister of State and his supporters for its position was that the industry was associated with social welfare fraud and crime.

Let us look at what the previous regulator said about that. Between 2008 and 2010 the number of consumer complaints reduced from 601 to 175. That is for 77 million journeys. The number of fixed charge penalties was reduced from 258 in 2008 to 129 in 2010. The number of prosecutions reduced from 106 to 32, while the number of offences reduced from 117 to 32. The danger in this legislation is that the part the Minister of State is retaining and has refused to change, despite all the amendments that have been tabled, is rigid quantity licensing. It will take 30 years before he secures the quota for wheelchair accessible vehicles and before it becomes open entry. We know from jurisdictions throughout the world that this means the taxi licences acquire scarcity value, those with them are in a monopoly and the standard of service declines. To overturn a decision that benefited the Irish public through the creation of approximately 20,000 extra jobs and generated time savings worth €780 million, as calculated by the Goodbody report, and to never even refer to the Goodbody report but to work from a document prepared by incumbents who do not like new entrants is wrong. It is the wrong way to carry out economic policy in this country.

I will regret it if this Bill goes forward in its current form. It is not the way to proceed. When we sometimes get economic policy right, it is good to persist with it. We have enough economic policies that need reform and this is not one of them. The evidence from what Kathleen Doyle and the previous regulator said in 2010 shows it was not an area of tax evasion and social welfare fraud. One forged driving licence is what the Minister for Social Protection found in a thorough investigation to clamp down on social welfare fraud. Ditto the views of the sector against part-time people, given that in a business that is so heavily concentrated between Thursday and Saturday part-timers are a normal economic response. However, the producers have dominated this, as they dominated the sector between 1978 and 2000 until the courts overturned it. What we have been doing here is unpicking a decision of the courts. I am sure this will return to the courts at some stage.

Incidentally, it is not just me saying this. It is what the previous regulator said. Scant regard has been paid to her role in this. It was not a laissez faireindustry. She was regulating but, as part of the programme for Government, her functions were moved to the National Transport Authority. It has assumed it took over a sector which was some type of wild west show, but it was not. I was anxious to put those numbers on the record. The sector was notlaissez fairebut was performing a viable function. That function is not furthered at all by what we are doing here. We still cannot get the clarity that we can move this Bill away from quantity licensing to quality licensing only. That is the reason for tabling the amendments. I am disappointed but not surprised that they have all been rejected. That is the way the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport operated with regard to air transport and still operates with regard to bus transport. If it sees competition, it tries to stop it. This sector was a success. I presume the main fault as far as the Department is concerned is that the success was not due to the Department but to the four learned judges who opened up the sector.

I wish the Department had a better view of open markets and competition, as would almost everybody in economics. This is the wrong way. It allows sheltered sectors to get regulatory capture over the Government and to get protection at all stages. It is about time we introduced legislation in the interests of the wider public, not just producers.