Taxi Regulations Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-09 ============================================================ Gerard P. Craughwell (IND), Labour Panel The Minister of State is very welcome. This is my first time to address him since he was re-elevated and I congratulate him on that. I am delighted to see him in post and am sure that the people over in north west are also delighted to see him in post as well. Recently I spoke in this House about a serious matter concerning the taxi industry and today I would like to address the current regulatory issues affecting the industry. I raised serious concerns in the House about companies holding up to 200 taxi plates and renting them out at rates of between €100 and €200 per week. Just last week I travelled in a taxi whose driver was paying €200 per week to rent a plate. That is €10,400 per year before vehicle maintenance, insurance, rental and fuel costs are factored in. Many drivers effectively work the first three days of the week just to pay the cost of running the car. When deregulation was brought in, the idea was to create more competition in the industry and to make taxis better value for money for ordinary citizens. I understand, anecdotally, that there are individuals in this city who hold 100 or 200 plates, some of whom are absent landlords living outside the State. This raises fundamental questions. Is this consistent with the original rationale for deregulation? How can we be sure those who are driving taxis have the necessary qualification, have passed the public service vehicle test, are properly insured and meet the safety standards? If I can rent a plate from somebody and stick up some sort of a form on my window, is anybody going to stop me and check that I have actually qualified to drive the car? Who allowed one individual to purchase 200 plates and rent them out at exorbitant sums like €10,400 a year? It is an enormous sum for somebody who does not even drive a taxi. We find that there are taxis on the road 24 hours a day, as two people may choose to rent the same plate or share the rental of the plate. Every person has a right to earn a living and that includes taxi drivers, so I have no difficulty with taxi drivers and the rates they charge. However, in recent years we have seen the growth of taxi call centres. Freenow was the first one into the country and Uber is here now. They are great services. I can pick up the phone or go to my app and hail a taxi, and that is fantastic but let us take an example I was given last week. A person booked a taxi from one of the platforms to go to Dublin Airport from Cabinteely. The cost of the taxi was quoted at €66. The person agreed to the charge outlined for them. What happened then? The company involved contacted the taxi drivers and said, "I have a trip from Cabinteely to Dublin Airport and I am offering €30 for it. Who wants to take it?". If nobody takes it at €30, it will increase it to €35. If nobody takes it at €35, it will increase again. Effectively, what we have is the very people who could introduce competition to the system by asking drivers to bid for runs are taking the fixed price and giving a greatly reduced price to the driver, making absolutely massive profits for themselves. This, I believe, is repugnant to the whole idea of deregulation. I understand the system in the UK is that some of these large companies are running a bidding competition for every trip. While the plan was to deregulate the system, these two issues are running against the notion of competition. One is the rental of a taxi plate. It should be one plate for one family - simple as that, or one plate for one driver. There should not be a capacity for anybody to own more than one plate and with regard to those who do own them, we should review the regulations and get back to a situation where every driver owns his own plate, or her own plate as the case may be. The other one then, of course, is the bidding. By all means, bid for runs but if you do, pass it on to the consumer. I look forward to the Minister of State's reply. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-09