Gerard Craughwell (Independent)

The Deputy Leader will be aware, as will the Cathaoirleach and many other Members of the House, taxi deregulation was brought in to increase competition and make the taxi service, particularly in the bigger cities, more available. I travelled in a taxi last week and the driver was renting the plate for the taxi. It cost him €200 a week. That is €10,000 a year. I understand anecdotally that there are people in this city who have 100 and 200 taxi plates they rent out. Some are absentee landlords - they do not live in the State. There are questions to be asked. Is that contrary to the raison d'être or rationale for deregulation? How sure can we be that those driving taxis in this city have gone through the SPSV test and are safe drivers? How sure can we be they are fully insured? Who in God's name ever allowed one individual to own 200 taxi plates and rent them out at a cost of €10,000 per year? One hundred plates at €10,000 per year is an enormous amount of money and yet most of the Members of this House will know it can be extremely difficult to get a taxi in Dublin because plates are not being issued. Every person has a right to make a living but the rationale for taxi plates was one plate for one driver to make a living, but where somebody has 100 plates, there is something wrong. If the story is true that there are people with 200 plates who are absentee landlords, the plates should be cancelled straight away and the people renting those plates should be able to go to the taxi regulator and buy a plate. I think it is about €500 or €5,000 - it is somewhere between those two figures - and you can make a living out of it. If you pay for the maintenance of your car, insurance and rent, you are probably working the first three days of the week for nothing. It is gross exploitation. There is also the story that some taxis are on the road 24 hours a day. A driver gets out of the taxi at 6 p.m. and somebody else gets in, gets out of the taxi at 6 a.m. and hands back over at 12 noon. It is totally unacceptable. We need to know taxis are regulated properly, drivers are insured properly and they have the necessary qualifications to be a taxi driver in any city in this country. I ask the Deputy Leader to take that up through the party system and perhaps her colleagues in Fine Gael might do the same.