Call for fees surplus to fund taxi industry

A €20 million surplus accrued by the Commission for Taxi Regulation from fees paid by taxi drivers is to fund the recently established National Transport Authority.

The commission was dissolved last January and subsumed into the new authority, and has been rebranded the Taxi Regulation Directorate.

Regulator Kathleen Doyle last October told an Oireachtas committee the commission was running a surplus of about €20 million in income from licensing and applying penalties to the taxi industry. She told the committee she wanted to use the surplus to subsidise drivers upgrading their vehicles to make them wheelchair-accessible.

The authority yesterday said accumulated money would be used to partially defray the exchequer’s costs in funding the authority’s operations, which would include its taxi regulatory work. Its annual statement of accounts would show how the money was used, it said.

Labour TD Kevin Humphreys said that while €1.5 million had been committed for grants to make cars wheelchair-accessible, this sum had been committed from exchequer funding, not the surplus. A significant portion of the €20 million should be invested back in the taxi industry, he said.

“The money which has been paid by taxi drivers must not disappear into the coffers of the NTA [National Transport Authority]. Within the Dublin region there is an urgent need for additional taxi ranks and related infrastructure.”

The income should also be used to ensure that regular inspections are taking place, he said. A recent Prime Timeprogramme on RTÉ which highlighted some illegal practices in the industry, including the falsification of National Car Test results for dangerous vehicles, showed there was a "cohort of drivers and operators who are abusing the system", he said.

It was only fair that drivers who played by the rules should be protected. “There is a regular income stream into the NTA from those working in the taxi industry and this must be used to ensure the laws regulating this area are enforced or else returned to licence holders,” he said.