A Fine Gael TD has spoken out against the planned fare increase for taxis, saying that it "serves to punish taxi customers for a lack of supply that is no fault of their own".
Taxi fares will rise by an average of 12% from Thursday, marking the first increase for cab drivers since 2018. However, Dublin-Rathdown TD Neale Richmond has said that an annual recruitment campaign is needed to "repair" the industry, rather a fare increase.
He cited the recent taxi driver recruitment campaign launched by the National Transport Authority, and said this should be replicated every year. "They must be an annual event to ensure that we have a steady flow of drivers entering the industry rather than the current peak followed by a steady decline," Deputy Richmond said.
Read more: 'How much will my taxi home from Dublin city centre cost after the fare increases?'
“While it is welcome that 906 new licenses have been issued over the past 12 months, we cannot expect this one campaign or one increase in applications to solve all the issues in the industry."
Deputy Richmond also said "unnecessary bureaucracy" should be removed, and the cost of taxi licenses and airport taxi permits should be reduced. But when it came to the fare increase for drivers, the TD said it was unfair on customers.
"With the cost of living and inflation impacting people at every turn, this fare increase serves to punish taxi customers for a lack of supply that is no fault of their own," he said.
“The rise in licenses issued this year and the accompanying recruitment campaign are of course very welcome moves, but we cannot expect them to solve this issue in its entirety”
Jim Waldron, spokesman for the National Private Hire and Taxi Association said that it was "out of order" to say taxi drivers should not get the increase. He told Dublin Live: "There's no point in trying to recruit people to a job that you can't make a living in.
"This fare increase is giving guys a chance to catch up on some of the losses they have made since 2018 when we last had a fare increase. Even with this fare increase of 12%, we would say we are way behind on fuel costs and the running costs of a taxi. For example, to get your car serviced is much more expensive than it used to be."
Mr Waldron noted that in order to get more taxis on the road during night time, safety concerns needed to be resolved.
He said: "I don't think money is the motivating factor in night time working, I think it's the driver's safety. One of the things the NBHTA has been calling for for a long, long time is a garda liaison officer.
"I hear people calling for a public transport police but we don't even have a liaison officer to work directly with the taxi sector. This would be very beneficial so we can sit down with the officer and discuss different issues in regards to safety of the taxi driver."
Mr Waldron also said better and more visible taxi rank infrastructure around the city centre that is supervised by marshals and CCTV would make drivers more comfortable working night time shifts.
"Then the people in the queue would be orderly and the marshal could say to the taxi driver, 'these people have been here for 20 minutes, they want to go to XYZ'. But now, if you're pulling into Camden St at 2:30am and there's twenty people and some of them are jumping around like lunatics, then you're not going to pull in."
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