The State's first commissioner for taxi regulation has set himself an ambitious agenda of reforming fare structures, writes Olivia Kelly.
Ger Deering is coming to the end of his first year as the State's first commissioner for taxi regulation and is about to get his teeth into the real meat of the job - setting taxi fares.
Mr Deering gets the responsibility for determining what taxi drivers can charge on September 1st, exactly one year since he took office.
Setting himself an ambitious agenda, he plans to completely change the way taxi fares are structured and introduce new fares which will be observed nationally, from early 2006.
His review of the fares, which is likely to see rates lowered in some areas, is likely to bring him the most public and industry attention he has had to date; however, in his first year of office he has already undertaken a major review of the service.
"There hadn't been a national review in the past. It's the most extensive review that has been done into the taxi hackney and limousine services and vehicle standards to date in Ireland," he said.
The review proposes a number of fundamental changes to the service, particularly in the area of driver training and accreditation and upgrading of the national fleet, with an emphasis on accessibility for disabled passengers.
One of major changes to the way the industry operates, and one which is likely to be introduced with the new fares, is the practice of drivers going "off meter" if hired for journeys outside certain areas.
"When you go outside the metered area it effectively becomes a private hire and it's a matter between the driver and customer as regards what the fare is. I'm proposing to change that radically and to have all fares on the meter. All fares would be charged on the meter, based on the distance you travel. In other words, the fare will no longer respect a geographic and administrative boundary."
Drivers will still operate within designated areas, governed by city and county boundaries, which means they can take passengers to any area they wish, but can only pick up passengers within their licensed area.
Mr Deering did consider allowing complete freedom of movement, but decided it would have a negative effect on the industry.
"You could end up with all of the taxis moving to a particular area at certain times. Certain areas would have no taxi service and others would have an over-supply."
Where previously drivers could refuse to take a passenger outside the metered area, Mr Deering proposes that they could in future refuse a fare if it was over a certain distance.
"In fairness to a driver if they're going home after a 10-hour shift they can't be expected to take a fare to Donegal."
The Commission for Taxi Regulation will also be taking over much of the work currently done by the Garda Carriage Office.
Information requests and complaints will now be handled by the commission, while granting licences, vetting drivers and enforcing the law will still be handled by gardaí.
"I believe it would be far more beneficial to everybody if gardaí could be freed up to spend more time on enforcement and that's their view as well. We would handle complaints and the gardaí would investigate complaints."
Instituting a better service for disabled customers is high on his list of priorities, but will be given a longer lead-in time than the fares issue to allow drivers to make their vehicles accessible.
"Overall people are quite happy with the level of service they are getting, but one group of people who were quite unhappy and found it very difficult to access services are people with a range of disabilities. Very significant number of service providers were not providing the service to people with disabilities."
The taxi industry and the public have until September 26th to make submissions to the national review of the industry. Detail are available on www.taxiregulator.ie