Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I thank him for coming here to respond to my Commencement matter, which speaks to the need for the Government to provide financial and other supports to the taxi service industry.

I congratulate the Minister of State and the Government. Today is a hopeful day. The announcement yesterday was very welcome to all sectors of industry and community and we are all looking forward with much greater hope today than we have been for a long time. I commend the Minister of State and the Government. It has been a challenging year. I acknowledge the support the Government has put in place for businesses, community organisations and families to help us all through from a financial perspective and a services perspective.

As I said, my Commencement matter speaks to the Government's need to respond to the taxi sector. I am a city dweller and anybody living in any of our cities or rural towns will be aware of how vitally important taxis are to our public transportation services.There are more than 23,000 licensed taxis in the country. They are a very important mode of public transportation. Taxis are safe and economical and offer city and urban dwellers an alternative to owning a private car, so they are hugely important. They have continued to operate during the pandemic and have provided a vital public transport service on the front line throughout the pandemic.

I appreciate this is not the remit of the Minister of State but the National Transport Authority, NTA, conducted a survey on the impact of the pandemic on taxi drivers and its research shows that almost 100% of taxi drivers have suffered a massive decrease in income since the pandemic. At the same, almost 100% of the taxi drivers had introduced measures at their own cost to ensure their services could continue to operate in a Covid-19 safe way. They installed barriers, wore masks, introduced hand sanitisers and adopted cashless payments at their own expense.

Throughout the pandemic, the taxi drivers as business operators, have had no support. The only support they were provided with was the pandemic unemployment payment. I recognise they were given the opportunity to continue to earn up €480 per month, but they have fixed annual costs of €11,000 per year. Instead of using their pandemic unemployment payment to pay for their groceries and family expenses, they have been paying for their insurance and cost of maintenance.

On top of that, they have an obligation to renew their car every ten years. I accept that last October, the Minister introduced a delay on renewal fees and registrations until June of this year, but that expires at the end of this year. It is unrealistic to expect any business owner to make a once-in-a-decade capital investment in his or her business when he or she has been, more or less, without a livelihood for the past 12 months.

The taxi drivers have lost confidence in the taxi advisory group. As I said at the outset, taxis are a vital component in our public transportation infrastructure and services. I urge the Minister of State to respond to the lack of confidence in the taxi advisory group expressed by the taxi sector and advise the House on how the Minister, Deputy Ryan, intends to respond to that situation.