Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising this matter I will bring the contents of his speech to the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, because it is a very important issue.

At present the transfer of small public service vehicle, SPSV, licences is prohibited under section 14(1) of the Taxi Regulation Act 2013. All SPSV vehicle licences are unique to the person to whom the licence has been issued and cannot be transferred or sold to any other person. This took account of a review of the taxi industry conducted in 2011. Action 14 of the published report recommended the introduction of a general prohibition on the transferability of taxi licences. The rationale for this position is that the licence should determine a person's suitability to carry out a function and it should not have monetary value or be traded on the open market. There is also one exemption to this non-transferability restriction. As the Senator alluded to, section 15 of the same Act does provide for an SPSV licence to continue to be operated by a person who was nominated by the licenceholder in advance of his or her death. In the event of the death of the holder of a licence, his or her nominated representative may, within three months of the death of the holder, make an application to the National Transport Authority, NTA, to continue to operate the licence. The person nominated by the licenceholder can be any adult or company chosen by the licenceholder. The nomination process is free of charge and the person nominated can be changed at any time prior to the licenceholder's death.

Prior to the removal of the quantitative restrictions that had existed up to 2000, taxi licences were bought and sold for considerable sums of money. Thereafter, the value of vehicle licences plummeted as the size of the taxi fleet increased from under 3,000 to a total fleet size, including hackneys and limousines, of 21,315 as of 31 January 2020. Since 2010, it has been regulatory policy to issue new small public service vehicle licences for taxis and hackneys only in respect of a wheelchair accessible vehicle, WAV. However, for several years this policy was effectively undermined by the availability of standard taxi and hackney vehicle licences - for saloon type vehicles - by means of transfer.The purchase cost of these licences by transfer was much lower than the additional cost of purchasing a WAV. This meant that it was much more commercially attractive for a new operator to purchase a transferred licence rather than a new WAV licence. The introduction of the transferability restriction in 2014 has addressed this issue. The number of WAV taxis at the end of 2013 was 898 while the total number as of 31 December 2020 was 3,015.

There are no plans to amend this legislation at this time. As mentioned, the rationale for the measure was that a licence should indicate a person’s suitability to carry out a function and should not have, by association, a monetary value or be traded on the open market. As quantitative restrictions have been removed from the taxi market and there are no barriers to entry to this industry other than the obligation to use a wheelchair accessible vehicle, it is not clear how the transferring of licences would deliver benefits to the industry or members of the public who use these services, especially those who require access to WAVs. Under the current SPSV regulations, the holder of a taxi licence may rent or lease a licence to another person. Further information on rules for such arrangements can be obtained directly from the National Transport Authority, which is the statutory regulator for the sector.